What's The Actual Brand Behind McDonald's Cookies?

Fruit-filled personal pies and candy-studded McFlurries (which are not the same as Frosties) tend to steal the spotlight on McDonald's dessert menu, but America's largest fast food chain offers plenty of other treats to satisfy your sweet tooth. One often overlooked McDonald's dessert is the humble soft-baked chocolate chip cookie. These classically comforting cookies have been a Mickey D's menu staple since the 1970s.

McDonald's chocolate chip cookies are served delightfully warm and gooey, but it turns out the fast food chain doesn't make them in-house. Instead, they're sent to Mickey D's locations frozen and flash-baked before serving for that fresh-from-the-oven feeling. This begs the question: What company actually makes McDonald's cookies? Fast food chains are often cagey about the brands behind popular menu items, but the answer in this case is sweet and simple: McDonald's chocolate chip cookies are supplied by the Swiss-based international bakery giant Aryzta, which is also where some of McDonald's burger buns come from.

You'd be forgiven if the name Aryzta doesn't ring a bell — the company has technically only existed for less than two decades. The frozen baked goods giant was born in 2008 from the merger of an Irish agricultural company and a Swiss bakery. However, whether you're a McDonald's cookie lover or not, you've probably enjoyed more than a few Aryzta-brand baked goods over the years. The food company is firmly established as one of the world's largest frozen baked goods manufacturers and provides frozen breads, pastries, pizzas, and more to retailers and restaurants across the globe.

In the United States, Aryzta North America, which is now called Aspire Bakeries after its 2021 acquisition, is behind popular baked goods brands like nostalgic cookie icon Otis Spunkmeyer and a pillar of supermarket bread aisles, La Brea Bakery (which sells some of the best dinner rolls around). In addition to McDonald's gooey chocolate chip cookies and burger buns, Aryzta has also been linked to other fast food favorites such as Subway's cookies and bread and Tim Hortons' donuts. If all this cookie talk has you craving a sweet treat from Mickey D's, here's our ultimate ranking of McDonald's desserts.