Speaker 1: It's sweeping the world and I've never heard of it.
Speaker 1: It's one more thing, Sack.
Speaker 2: I saw a picture of the hot new boy band
Speaker 2: the other day, the new BTS, Yeah, and I had
Speaker 2: never heard of them, but they looked exactly like BTS.
Speaker 3: K pop again.
Speaker 1: Korean fellows Yeah, yeah, kind of a tough looking one
Speaker 1: and yeah, exactly sporty one.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny is because I read fairly voraciously,
Speaker 1: mostly for this job, partly out of just habit, I
Speaker 1: do become aware of some of the youth trends. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you don't have kids, you have to accidentally come
Speaker 1: across it.
Speaker 4: Oh no, if I didn't have kids, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of stuff I wouldn't know.
Speaker 1: Well, right, but I'm thinking about, you know, back in
Speaker 1: the day, not terribly long ago, the idea of like
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal doing an article on me and
Speaker 1: my friends saying, you know that kicks ass instead of
Speaker 1: that's cool. I mean, nobody would care. Nobody would write
Speaker 1: about it. Old people wouldn't be Older people wouldn't be
Speaker 1: aware of it. They wouldn't know our hot trend. They
Speaker 1: would know that Rio Speedwagon recently was hotter than sticks
Speaker 1: or whatever. Nobody cared and nobody should care. Having said that,
Speaker 1: I came across this headline, the billion dollar cookie empire
Speaker 1: that teens love and parents hate. Okay, Katie, do you
Speaker 1: know anything about Crumble?
Speaker 2: Ah?
Speaker 4: Sam said that to me on Sunday. I am really yeah,
Speaker 4: came up somehow came up. He said, Oh, every crumbles
Speaker 4: the hottest thing. Dad, dude. I was like, I don't
Speaker 4: know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, they're so good. We're getting a sex
Speaker 3: face from Katie.
Speaker 4: Michael, They're very good.
Speaker 5: The things I would do for Crumble cookies.
Speaker 3: Oh don't la la la la. Hr is going I'll.
Speaker 4: Lose my toes over those cookies.
Speaker 1: Wow, a really dark diabetes joke, but a good one
Speaker 1: from Michael.
Speaker 4: So are they in plastic like oreos? Do I buy
Speaker 4: them at a store?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 5: No, They in a box like donuts.
Speaker 1: And they're they're five bucks each, like in seven hundred.
Speaker 4: Calories per cookies.
Speaker 3: So here's the.
Speaker 1: Story, and this is this is it's it's more about
Speaker 1: the Internet age than the cookies. Every Sunday at eight
Speaker 1: pm Eastern, tween and teen girls across the country check
Speaker 1: Crumble cookies.
Speaker 3: It's Crumble without the e at the end.
Speaker 1: Crumble, they check Crumble Cookies social media to discover the
Speaker 1: week's newest flavors.
Speaker 3: Then they start begging their parents to take them to
Speaker 3: the bakery for.
Speaker 1: Five dollars for a five dollars seven hundred calorie cookie,
Speaker 1: And like.
Speaker 4: Can I go to any grocery store?
Speaker 5: Do I have to go to a you have to
Speaker 5: go to a Crumble cookie.
Speaker 4: A Crumble cookie, Okay, yeah, I have them near me.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Just a few more details that will probably make it.
Speaker 1: Oh, my wife was baking cookies yesterday afternoon.
Speaker 3: Holy cats. I just thought, wow, fresh baked cookies.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, you can't say no to that.
Speaker 1: No, And it's just it's we maybe the best smell
Speaker 1: on earth other than like your baby.
Speaker 4: We were at we were at a restaurant the other night,
Speaker 4: and one of the dessert options were three cookies and
Speaker 4: a glass of milk. And it was like fifteen dollars
Speaker 4: or something for three cookies and glass of milk. But
Speaker 4: they baked them. It took a while to get the dessert.
Speaker 4: But you had a hot, fresh baked chocolate chip cookie,
Speaker 4: oatmeal raisin cookie, and then some other kind of cookie
Speaker 4: and a cold glass of milk. I thought, that's a
Speaker 4: freaking good dessert right there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, Wow, you throw a snickerdoodle in there, fresh bake.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh well, I don't think you can top Michael,
Speaker 4: who is actually diabetic. I give up my toes for that. Jack.
Speaker 5: There's a crumble cookie in West sacramentow. You can hit
Speaker 5: it on your way home.
Speaker 4: Th oh, just what I need.
Speaker 3: Wow wow.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't matter if anyone really likes pink donut,
Speaker 1: lemon cheesecake or oatmeal skillet cookies.
Speaker 3: They feel like they have to have them.
Speaker 1: And TikTok YouTube and Instagram videos are fueling the surge.
Speaker 1: So what's really interesting and the reason I brought it
Speaker 1: up is the co founders have concocted what the Journal
Speaker 1: calls a perfect recipe of social media and sugar quote.
Speaker 1: Our strategy right from the beginning was social media, says
Speaker 1: Jason McGowan, who started the company. What is this seven
Speaker 1: years ago? Single storem logan Utah of All Place now
Speaker 1: chief executive. Now they have a thirty person social media
Speaker 1: team with professionals who film and photograph the cookies for
Speaker 1: their weekly flavor announcements and build like a viral. You've
Speaker 1: got to be in on this. You gotta be cool.
Speaker 1: All your friends are talking about it. Thing new cookies
Speaker 1: every week, which.
Speaker 4: Works for some people. It works for enough people. That
Speaker 4: happens a teen and tween girls, for instance, happens with
Speaker 4: many coffee shops in my town when the word gets
Speaker 4: out the coffee shop and people wait in line for
Speaker 4: an hour to say they've been there and how amazing
Speaker 4: it is. I'm the opposite of that kind of person.
Speaker 4: But if the cookie is good, the cookie is good.
Speaker 4: I just wonder because like Krispy Kreme Donuts did this,
Speaker 4: and uh, a lot of the Krispy Kreme locations came
Speaker 4: and went. I mean they were super hot for a
Speaker 4: little while and they went away because a lot of it
Speaker 4: was the oh have you been you haven't been. I've
Speaker 4: been once. That wears off. It's just do people continue
Speaker 4: to come and get this product?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that kind of happened with nothing. Bunt cakes too
Speaker 5: a little bit. They were a little trendy there for
Speaker 5: a while.
Speaker 3: But I I just think bunt cakes, is that what
Speaker 3: you just said?
Speaker 4: Man here today, gone today? That one came and went
Speaker 4: without me ever hearing about it.
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 5: Really okay, but it's a shop that only does bunt cakes,
Speaker 5: but they do little personal ones and they've got all
Speaker 5: the different flavors, and they come and cute packaging and
Speaker 5: they were like the big gift for a while. But whatever,
Speaker 5: Crumble Cookies, I'm looking at their national flavor this week,
Speaker 5: white chocolate raspberry cheesecake. Yes, please, cranberry white chip, which
Speaker 5: is just a white chocolate chip cookie with cranberry. Now,
Speaker 5: Joe snicker Doodle cupcake, a warm cinnamon sugar cookie with cream.
Speaker 4: Don't make sex noises. I gotta leave if you're gonna
Speaker 4: make sex noises.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, go back to that description.
Speaker 5: All right, your eyes Jack, Yeah, plug yourrs Jack. A
Speaker 5: warm cinnamon sugar cookie topped with cream, cheese, frosting, and
Speaker 5: an extra dash of cinnamon sugar. And it looks delightful.
Speaker 3: Go no further because the bounds of decency.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I would, oh crap, I would wake up
Speaker 1: next to that cookie and look at it longingly say
Speaker 1: I think I love you.
Speaker 3: Wow. Wow. So the other aspect of real quick, Katie,
Speaker 3: you describe one of those cookies again.
Speaker 6: Oh, I'm looking at pictures now here's Yeah, we'll do
Speaker 6: the white chocolate raspberry because it sounds great. A smooth
Speaker 6: cheesecake filling confused with white chocolate, marbled and baked with
Speaker 6: raspberry jam doing topped with a whipped cream dog and
Speaker 6: white chocolate curls.
Speaker 3: Thanks cookies.
Speaker 4: And is that also in high heels also, I'm looking
Speaker 4: at that high heels and stockings. Oh my god, I'm
Speaker 4: looking at the white chocolate raspberry cheesecake. That is something
Speaker 4: right there.
Speaker 3: I know, stop it, stop it with that.
Speaker 4: I remember where I heard of my son. So my
Speaker 4: son went to our local donut shop the other day
Speaker 4: and he brought back this crazy donut and it had
Speaker 4: maple on it, bacon on it, and then some stuff
Speaker 4: on it. And I said, what's that and he said
Speaker 4: it's crumble I said what crumble cookie. You don't know
Speaker 4: crumble cookie? And I said no. So they put crumble
Speaker 4: cookie on top of the doughnut and the bacon. But
Speaker 4: that's how I first heard about it. Interesting thing about
Speaker 4: the logo too, because you mentioned it's crumbl all small letters,
Speaker 4: not capital. Do you see that article the other day
Speaker 4: I think goes in the Wall Street Journal about modern
Speaker 4: logos and how they've cracked the code on what we
Speaker 4: remember or what tracks our eye. But that's why I
Speaker 4: follow you that almost all logos now are small letters,
Speaker 4: no capital letters. It's got something to do with remembering
Speaker 4: and catching your eye. Capitol letters are over if it's
Speaker 4: Google or Microsoft or Crumble Cookie or whatever. Small letters,
Speaker 4: short words, round childlike letters like these. Are those logos
Speaker 4: really really work? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It turns out to one of these Crumble Milk chocolate
Speaker 1: chip cookies seven hundred and thirty calories.
Speaker 3: That is one hundred and forty more than a big Mac. Wow.
Speaker 5: So I will rest your souls with this. They make
Speaker 5: a miniature version of all their flavors and you can
Speaker 5: get them, and they're only four hundred calories.
Speaker 4: That's a lot of calories.
Speaker 1: So the others back to this that I find so interesting,
Speaker 1: aside from cookie lust, which I feel as much as
Speaker 1: any human being on earth love them. First of all,
Speaker 1: obviously it was the We designed this with social media
Speaker 1: and mind. This was our plan. The other part of
Speaker 1: it is the economic power of girl pop culture, as
Speaker 1: the movies Barbie and Wicked have shown, as Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: has shown, that's marketers are aware of it and looking
Speaker 1: toward it in new ways. Although you know Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: is a lot of young girls in adolescents and teens
Speaker 1: and tweens and stuff.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of adults too.
Speaker 4: Like I said, with Krispy Kreme donut and this Crumble thing,
Speaker 4: I'll be interested to see if you can make that last,
Speaker 4: because you have to be able to still be open
Speaker 4: a year later when the TikTok challenge craziness of it
Speaker 4: wears off and it's just a product, are people going
Speaker 4: to continue to stop buying a regular basis and buy
Speaker 4: a dozen to bring to work or whatever. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's amazing to me how many any donut shops I
Speaker 4: know of that have survived for many, many years. And
Speaker 4: they're they're not nice, they're not fancy, they're not they're
Speaker 4: not anything. But somehow they got the right combination of
Speaker 4: the price and donuts that they can stay open and
Speaker 4: keep the doors open.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: One more business point.
Speaker 1: Crumble puts reviews up on their website as people film
Speaker 1: little tiktoks or instagrams.
Speaker 3: Or whatever to review.
Speaker 1: They even put the negative ones up there. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're a community, let's all talk about it and talk
Speaker 1: about what flavors we like.
Speaker 3: And so that's an interesting point of view.
Speaker 1: The second point I want to make is a little
Speaker 1: more cloudy, amorphous, foggy. Corporate America has fully embraced girly
Speaker 1: stuff for girls at the same time when like the
Speaker 1: transgender madness.
Speaker 3: Is sweeping the schools and.
Speaker 1: Girls are pretending they're boys and there's a mass contagion
Speaker 1: about that. Is it just that with the online thing,
Speaker 1: people are so easily led down one path or the other,
Speaker 1: whether it's cookie gorgeon or getting their.
Speaker 3: Breasts cut off. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know because like you and I are not
Speaker 4: that person. So if something becomes really popular, my knee
Speaker 4: jerk reaction is to not want to eat it, wear it,
Speaker 4: listen to it, whatever. And that's dumb also because sometimes
Speaker 4: this stuff is good. But that's my knee jerk reaction,
Speaker 4: as opposed to most people whose knee jerk reaction is
Speaker 4: that's what people are into. I want to go. I
Speaker 4: need to go to the coffee shop. I need to
Speaker 4: eat that donut, I need to wear those shoes, I
Speaker 4: need to listen to that music. So you know, it's
Speaker 4: impossible for people like you and I to get in
Speaker 4: the head of people that want to be part of
Speaker 4: that all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially in the modern world with all of its
Speaker 1: tools and avenues to find out about stuff and get
Speaker 1: approval and thumbs ups and hearts and all for you
Speaker 1: agreeing with other people. My final note will be last
Speaker 1: week's menu included the Oh many of the new cookie
Speaker 1: varieties are inspired by customer suggestions. Last week's menu included
Speaker 1: the Brookie pie That is a chocolate chip cookie cradling
Speaker 1: a brownie, topped with vanilla moose and drizzled with chocolate.
Speaker 5: Come on, oh, how are we supposed to stay in
Speaker 5: shape with this kind of stuff?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: So that's a pretty clever idea, having new different things
Speaker 4: every week, that's a pretty good idea. And then you
Speaker 4: know what, science go ahead, sorry, and just being set
Speaker 4: up to be able to pull that off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's it's clever as hell. So science needs
Speaker 1: to come up with this some sort of I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly how you would do it. It would probably involve
Speaker 1: electrodes and scanners. But you'd be on an elliptical eating
Speaker 1: and there would be like an arrow. Are you gaining
Speaker 1: weight or losing weight as you on the elliptical? Maybe
Speaker 1: you're even jogging?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and yeating? And what you're trying to do is
Speaker 4: just keep the needle in the middle right exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you'll break even.
Speaker 1: Yeah, up to full on self indulgent as long as
Speaker 1: you kept the thing going for and you put the
Speaker 1: donut down for a second.
Speaker 4: Okay, I gotta walk a little bit more. Okay, keep
Speaker 4: thinking of the bite. Just try to keep the needle
Speaker 4: right in the middle.
Speaker 3: I need that.
Speaker 4: I need that all day long, right in front of me,
Speaker 4: that needle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and or you'd think, holy crap, I'm going hard
Speaker 1: at this elliptical and I'm still not breaking even eating
Speaker 1: this stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah. That's always rough when you're on the treadmill or
Speaker 4: whatever for a half an hour and you burn like
Speaker 4: the equivalent of a half of snickers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, lesson learned.
Speaker 4: So I got a donut shop near me. As I've mentioned,
Speaker 4: it used to be by my old house. I moved,
Speaker 4: and now it moved, so it seems to have followed me.
Speaker 4: But interesting thing, I'm amazed by entrepreneurs, people who open
Speaker 4: up businesses and make a goal of it.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 4: I really am uh kind of jealous and jealous and
Speaker 4: idealize people that do that. But anyway, go to that
Speaker 4: donut shop and like kind of roughly counting the number
Speaker 4: of donuts in there and rough idea what I think
Speaker 4: the profit is on prednat. I just can't figure out
Speaker 4: how they come out ahead. And there's lots of stories
Speaker 4: like that. I just figured, how can you possibly sell
Speaker 4: enough donuts to like pay a couple of salaries the electricity?
Speaker 4: But blah blah blah. I just I don't know how
Speaker 4: that works. On one hand, the other part of it
Speaker 4: is he and his wife are super fit, and it
Speaker 4: just kind of.
Speaker 3: Bothererate a minute.
Speaker 4: I don't mind a fat guy and his fat wife
Speaker 4: running a donut shop, but super like ridiculously fit, you
Speaker 4: know those people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we had this in our workplace, remember, Yeah, what's.
Speaker 4: Going on with you? You're so fit and you're selling donuts.
Speaker 4: I don't think you've had a donut in your life?
Speaker 4: Are you?
Speaker 5: Just?
Speaker 4: Like what's going on here? You like these mocking the
Speaker 4: rest of us, lack of like.
Speaker 1: The mobs that sell death on the streets the drugs.
Speaker 1: But if you're one of the monsters, you're not allowed to.
Speaker 4: Touch it, right, Yeah? Meaning to ask him about that, Like,
Speaker 4: do you ever eat? Don't eat a donut in front
Speaker 4: of me? I want to see you eat a donut
Speaker 4: for it.
Speaker 3: In fact, I'll buy two dozen donuts you eat a donut.
Speaker 4: I just want to see you take a bite of
Speaker 4: one of your donuts.
Speaker 5: You guys are gonna start going into donut shops and
Speaker 5: threatening the fit owners. Eat a donut.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you mock me. Eat a donut.
Speaker 5: Also, Joe, one more for you, Crumble, Crumble does do
Speaker 5: a key lime pie cookie?
Speaker 3: Come on? Oh yeah, I'm only a man. How can
Speaker 3: I resist?
Speaker 5: I only need three toes on each foot just to
Speaker 5: a just so I can get by.
Speaker 4: That's funny. Well, I guess that's it.