A half-baked scheme: The Crumbl Cookies Drama 🍪
A half-baked scheme: The Crumbl Cookies Drama 🍪
When the cookie Crumbls: Explaining the Crumbl Cookies Drama 🍪
Crumbl Cookies has been a huge topic of conversation on my timeline lately. From the Olivia Rodriguez cookies being not that good to Bee Better having a beef with the CEO of Crumbl Cookie and people finding out how many calories a single cookie contains, it’s been A LOT.
But today, I have a different story for you. It is a story of two Crumbl Cookie fans with a dream, a suitcase, and 700 Crumbl Cookies.
What’s a Crumbl Cookie?
Aside from the previously mentioned beef, Crumbl Cookies is a Billion-dollar (yes, Billion with a B) cookie company that has been taking over the industry by storm. Founded in 2017 by Jason McGaan and Sawyer Hemsley, who had no prior baking experience (to have the confidence of a white man) in Utah. The startup, entirely self-funded by Jason, who invested $68,000, has now expanded to 980 stores across the US and nine international locations. Their entire thing is to change their menu EVERY WEEK. From a marketing standpoint, this is genius because it creates scarcity and urgency amongst their consumers. Hence, the thousands of Crumbl cookies-tasting videos that are on my FYP. This whole thing has been super successful because, in 2022, they sold 300 million cookies and generated $1 billion in revenue. If you think I am this amazing journalist who found all of this information, I am not. I 100% stole everything from this video by CNBC Make It. I love the series 10/10 and would recommend watching it.
Previous controversies
Knowing you guys love some good tea I thought I’d include this part too. Aside from their really good PR with CNBC, Crumbl doesn’t have the cleanest record either. I mean you can’t really build a Billion dollar company without having a few skeletons in the closet? That’s a rhetoric question by the way.
Tastes like shit
A lot of people feel like the cookies are over hyped. Earlier this year Bee better, may he rest in peace (not dead just cancelled), did a taste test of the cookies. In his video titled Crumbl Cookies is a SCAM he calls out the cookie company saying their cookies were dry and straight up taste like shit. Sawyer, the co-founder of the company, commented on a follow up tasting video Bee Better did saying: “He secretly eats the whole box after filming.” To which Bee Better responded with another video showing he had thrown out the cookies and telling him to make better ones. This isn’t the first time Crumbl has been called out for having dry and flavourless cookies.
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Underbaked cookies
Having dry cookies flavourless cookies is one thing but on the complete opposite end people have been complaining about the cookies being undercooked. Legit almost raw. One of the top posts in the r/CrumblCookies Reddit posted 5 months ago is titled “Got food poisoning from raw crumbl :(” In which the user shares a picture of the raw cookie and explains how they threw up a few hours after eating the cookies. Other had commented having experienced the same. The Washington Post just posted an article titled “Review | Crumbl cookies are overhyped and underbaked”.
Labour law violations
The US Departement of Labor was on their ass in December 2022. They fined 11 Crumbl Cookie franchises in multiple states (California, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Utah, and Washington) for violating the CHILD labour laws. Apparently they were having 14-15 year olds work longer hours and later than legally allowed which they aren’t supposed to work past 7PM, more than 40 hour weeks or 8 hours per day. They also made them opperate potentially dangerous machinery as written by WRAL. Crumbl had to come out and release a statement.
I guess that wasn’t enough because a year ago another franchise in Darthmouth, MA posted a job listing for an urgent overnight shift, which was from 12AM to 5AM. However, in order to be officially hired you had to complete an unpaid trial shift. According to the poster it was to “avoid doing the various paperwork and see what the job entails”. To me it sounded like he just needed someone to cover a shift and never intended on hiring them.
Breaking labour laws for a company? Couldn’t be me. Now let’s get back to the original tea.
What’s the tea bestie?
A little bit over a week ago an account under the name @crumblsydney announced that Crumbl is landing in Australia. The sale was set to happen on Sunday, September 29 at 12PM local time until the cookies were sold out. This announcement quickly spread across the city one user on Reddit posted: “This is hilarious! My mum texted me on the weekend asking if I had heard of Crumbl as she saw a pop up with lines round the block.”
How did Crumbl Cookie end up in Sydney?
As mentioned previously, Crumbl Cookie is a US brand. They do have a few international franchises which are in Canada and Puerto Rico however on their Wikipedia page it does say they are expanding in Australia and UAE soon. I guess some Australian fans couldn’t wait any longer and decided to take it upon themselves to get Crumbl to Sydney a bit earlier than anticipated. Two fans of the brand decided to fly all the way to Hawaii and order 1,000 Crumbl cookies to be sold in in their hometown. You’re probably wondering: “1,000? They only sold 700.” According to them 300 of the cookies got damaged during transit.
Hold on. How did they manage to transport 1,000 cookies to AUSTRALIA?
Where there is a will there is a way. A lot of people were sceptical of whether or not the cookies were real plus a bunch of other super valid concerns people had. They decided to address these questions themselves in a Google Doc that is linked in the bio of their TikTok page. This is the story they are telling everyone. So according to them they flew all the way to Hawaii and ordered a 1,000 cookies.
People were worried about how they got them through customs, but according to them they declared the cookies as commercial goods (they redacted sensitive information). They did disclose that they were importing cookies in their luggage and it was cleared by Biosecurity.
How do they taste if they’re old?
Now these aren’t things that I can verify but so it’s more he said she said from the internet but apparently their flights were delayed. Meaning that the cookies are definitely not fresh at all. Regarding quality, they claimed to have adhered to the recommended storage guidelines. Which were to keep them in an airtight container for 3 days or refrigerate them for up to 7 days. They did note that they warmed some of them up to enhance the flavours.
The taste tests were pretty 50/50 when it came to tasting them. Some thought the cookies were good. While others didn’t like them at all. That seems to be a common theme regardless of them being old or not. People either ride for those cookies or absolutely hate them.
How much money did they make?
As you know they sold 700 cookies at $17.50 each (I know don’t get me started on that). They broke down the costs after people suspected they made $12,250 from this thing. However they were quick to debunk that since they said the event was never for profit and simply to “bring the cookies to Crumbl fans” and broke down the costs that you can see below. How much they made is still unclear. But according to their breakdown. They would be in the red.
Who is behind all of this?
Daily Mail was actually able to track down who was behind this entire thing by tracking the company, Sugar Party, who organized the event. They found out the pop up was organized by two brothers, Toby Joshua (18) and his older brother Noah (21). Toby Joshua is still in high school by the way. Daily mail showed up to their house to ask questions bit the mom refused to answer. Posting their house in the article is a bit excessive in my opinion.
This is a picture of the family I stole from Daily Mail
After the Daily Mail revealed the culprits, the sentiment seemed a lot more positive. People were actually impressed that the two boys pulled this off.
The golden question: How is this even legal?
I’m going to preface by saying this: I am not Australian and I am not a lawyer. So I have no freaking idea about the laws over there. But they claim to not have infringed on the Crumbl Cookies’ copyright. They said they made it very clear that the pop up was in no way affiliated with Crumbl Cookies and simply were fans sharing the love for the cookie brand.
People are wondering if the brothers will get sued but so far the brand hasn’t really shown any signs that they were. While their website does say that they can decide where and who sells their products they do judge it on a case by case basis. A spokesperson of the brand told SmartCompany that they loved seeing the excitement for the brand around the world although the event WAS NOT sponsored by them (very important). However they are letting us know where you can know about all the locations they have and any future ones that will be announced.
I do want to note that Crumbl cookie did sue two cookie companies, Crave Cookies and Dirty Dough, in 2022 because they felt like they had allegedly copied their business model. Maybe they are trying to stay in the Australian’s good graces by not suing?
The CEO responds
Sawyer, the Co-founder responded under one cookie tasting video saying: “You need to try them fresh in the 🇺🇸! PS: This popup is not affiliated with Crumbl Cookies.” He also commented on another video saying they should expedite their visit to Australia. If people are willing to pay almost $18 of an almost week old cookie. They will definitely make bank there.
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This is everything about the Crumbl Cookies Pop-Up event in Australia. Just remember besties if you ever have imposter syndrome about whether or not you are qualified to do something, two men with no baking experience built a Billion dollar cookie company and two kids successfully drew hundreds of people to buy cookies without any certifications whatsoever.
What's your take? Genius marketing or half-baked scheme? 🍪
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