Australian fans of a US cookie with a cult following flew to Hawaii, bought hundreds of baked goods, and re-sold them in Sydney. Customers who feel "scammed" are questioning how what they did is legal.
But what Ms Salagaras and the dozens of others who purchased the cookies didn’t know was that their baked goods were five days old, purchased at a store in Hawaii by people unaffiliated with Crumbl Cookie (Crumbl), and flown back to Australia.
Hmm. Setting aside trademark law, that sounds like a legitimate concern from a consumer standpoint. This “Crumbl Cookie” company presumably wouldn’t intentionally sell five-day-old baked goods under their brand, and as a consumer, I’d distinguish between fresh cookies and five-day-old cookies, even if five-day-old cookies are perfectly edible. Maybe there’s an argument for making it normal to also rate the maximum age of a given baked good – I don’t know if that’s mandated in the US, but bakeries I’ve seen normally distinguish between bagels and day-old bagels, for example.
But setting legalities aside…I wonder how practical it would be to do something like this and get better output than these guys flying the things did?
Most of the time, it probably makes sense to just bake whatever the thing is domestically. But it sounds like the issue here is that the demand is small in scale, not enough to support a domestic bakery:
“I think the fact that our market is small here, means that there’s a lot of things that never get here,” said Ellen Garbarino, a professor in marketing at the University of Sydney’s Business School.
According to Professor Garbarino, many international brands are unlikely to open permanent locations in Australia due to the required costs and expected return.
“The cost of setting that up is pretty high, to get it into the shelves or to get a retail outlet and pay rent and get customers and get staff and all those kinds of things, and get over the laws of a different country.”
So for Australia – and, hell, anyone to some degree – it might make sense to just try to do a better job of being able to ship stuff and keep it as fresh as possible.
There isn’t a single well-defined meaning of “stale.” When we say bread is stale, we usually mean it’s hard. Interestingly, this is due to the bread absorbing water from the air (water usually softens things, doesn’t it?) If bread is slightly hardened, you may be able to restore some of its freshness by microwaving it. This will make it obviously moist, and you can then toast it. This is also a good procedure if you freeze bread, which we have to do in our household because otherwise we eat way too much :) It’s not like super-fresh bread, but I find it edible.
Another meaning of “stale” is partially rotten or rancid. Rotting is generally due to bacterial growth. Rancidification is chemical oxidation of fats to fatty acids, which is why rancid butter tastes sour (acids are sour).
I mean, there are ways that you can counter that. They will add cost to the item. But they’re doable.
Like, you can make something not rot by irradiating it sufficiently and then sealing the food in a sterile environment.
Storing them in a low-oxygen environment, like under carbon dioxide, can cut into oxidation (though I’m not sure that that’d help much for cookies if they use yeast to rise, since the yeast would require oxygen, though maybe they’re okay if you use baking soda to make them rise).
You could control humidity in the transport container.
The shelf life of Oreos can depend on various factors, including the storage method and whether the package has been opened. A packet of Oreos typically comes with a “best before” date, which is usually set for 9 to 12 months after the manufacturing date. This date serves as a guideline for optimal freshness rather than a hard expiration date. When stored properly in a cool, dry place, unopened Oreos can retain their quality slightly beyond this date, while opened Oreos should be consumed within a shorter timeframe to enjoy their characteristic crunch and flavor.
Oreos are designed to have a pretty impressive shelf life, as long as you don’t open the package. They’re very dry. The problem with these “Crumbl Cookie” things is trying to use a cookie that isn’t designed to have a shelf life but to get more of one. So you can’t alter the cookie, can’t add preservatives or something.
But some of the processes I listed above don’t require modifying the original cookie.
But setting legalities aside…I wonder how practical it would be to do something like this and get better output than these guys flying the things did?
Ghost kitchens can be rented for not very much in terms of expense. using a ghost kitchen rental, you can bake them the night before and sell them in the morning. Some of the spaces I’m looking at, it’s about 150/month (USD) for a furnished kitchen. you can then drive them out that morning to outlets (Grocery stores, gas stations, farmers markets?).
alternatively, its about 2k for a low end comercial convection oven, about 6k for a conveyer/impinger oven (which would offer higher through-put on the cookies and bake-on-demand.) a comercial mixer goes for abotu 1k, and then there’s the truck… which not gonna guess at.
the airfare, if that’s what they were doing is 150 for the cheapest ticket, which would stack up. from what I can tell, general shipping starts at around that much as well. Meaning that it would stack up quickly. So for a one time thing where you were scalping somebody else’s product? sure, it might make some sense. but you’re going to lose business fast since nobody is going to willingly pay 20 bucks for stale cookies, especially if they taste like the inside of someone’s luggage. (Though, I suspect they were shipped as airfreight, which is why it took 5 days to get out there. Not sure which would be worse. Tasting like someone’s luggage, or tasting like an amazon box.)
Personally, if I’m spending that much on a cookie, it had better be made fresh and come warm and gooey. Just saying.
Hmm. Setting aside trademark law, that sounds like a legitimate concern from a consumer standpoint. This “Crumbl Cookie” company presumably wouldn’t intentionally sell five-day-old baked goods under their brand, and as a consumer, I’d distinguish between fresh cookies and five-day-old cookies, even if five-day-old cookies are perfectly edible. Maybe there’s an argument for making it normal to also rate the maximum age of a given baked good – I don’t know if that’s mandated in the US, but bakeries I’ve seen normally distinguish between bagels and day-old bagels, for example.
But setting legalities aside…I wonder how practical it would be to do something like this and get better output than these guys flying the things did?
Most of the time, it probably makes sense to just bake whatever the thing is domestically. But it sounds like the issue here is that the demand is small in scale, not enough to support a domestic bakery:
So for Australia – and, hell, anyone to some degree – it might make sense to just try to do a better job of being able to ship stuff and keep it as fresh as possible.
https://www.quora.com/What-chemical-reaction-causes-food-to-go-stale
I mean, there are ways that you can counter that. They will add cost to the item. But they’re doable.
Like, you can make something not rot by irradiating it sufficiently and then sealing the food in a sterile environment.
Storing them in a low-oxygen environment, like under carbon dioxide, can cut into oxidation (though I’m not sure that that’d help much for cookies if they use yeast to rise, since the yeast would require oxygen, though maybe they’re okay if you use baking soda to make them rise).
You could control humidity in the transport container.
https://discover.texasrealfood.com/food-shelf-life/oreos
Oreos are designed to have a pretty impressive shelf life, as long as you don’t open the package. They’re very dry. The problem with these “Crumbl Cookie” things is trying to use a cookie that isn’t designed to have a shelf life but to get more of one. So you can’t alter the cookie, can’t add preservatives or something.
But some of the processes I listed above don’t require modifying the original cookie.
Ghost kitchens can be rented for not very much in terms of expense. using a ghost kitchen rental, you can bake them the night before and sell them in the morning. Some of the spaces I’m looking at, it’s about 150/month (USD) for a furnished kitchen. you can then drive them out that morning to outlets (Grocery stores, gas stations, farmers markets?).
alternatively, its about 2k for a low end comercial convection oven, about 6k for a conveyer/impinger oven (which would offer higher through-put on the cookies and bake-on-demand.) a comercial mixer goes for abotu 1k, and then there’s the truck… which not gonna guess at.
the airfare, if that’s what they were doing is 150 for the cheapest ticket, which would stack up. from what I can tell, general shipping starts at around that much as well. Meaning that it would stack up quickly. So for a one time thing where you were scalping somebody else’s product? sure, it might make some sense. but you’re going to lose business fast since nobody is going to willingly pay 20 bucks for stale cookies, especially if they taste like the inside of someone’s luggage. (Though, I suspect they were shipped as airfreight, which is why it took 5 days to get out there. Not sure which would be worse. Tasting like someone’s luggage, or tasting like an amazon box.)
Personally, if I’m spending that much on a cookie, it had better be made fresh and come warm and gooey. Just saying.