On Friday, April 5th, 2024 it came to light that some Crumbl Cookies franchise owners were encouraging bakers and employees to use expired ingredients when baking the cookies. This is something that has happened at a number of locations. Let’s dig deeper to understand how Crumbl Cookies locations get their ingredients and if, in fact, they are using expired ingredients.
Crumbl Cookies locations throughout the country received their ingredients from a number of vendors. Most locations have a Sysco or other food distributor within a few hours in which they receive most of the basic ingredients such as eggs, butter, milk, etc. Specialty ingredients come from Crumbl Foods or Eventful Sweets, which are both mandating by Crumbl Corporate. These ingredients are the much more specific ingredients for specialized cookies such as toppings or candies.
Here are some photos of ingredients that were expired but managers/owners encouraged bakers to use the ingredients anyway.
While some franchise owners may claim the butter emulsion in the first photo can have an “extended” expiration date, that argument cannot be used with Chips Ahoy cookies.
To be clear, Crumbl Foods has sent expired items to Crumbl Cookies locations with an announcement that the company that made the product offered an extension on the expiration date. In fact, this is not all that common as Crumbl Foods only ships ground shipping. This is why so many stores run out of cookies on the east coast. They have to have the speciality ingredients shipped all the way from Utah. This is also why managers/franchise owners tell employees to use the ingredients they have. These that have their money on the line recognize that if they don’t have the ingredients the week the cookie is run, they likely will not receive those ingredients from Crumbl Foods.
As far as the health and safety of anyone that eats a Crumbl cookie that used expired products, that is for a dietician or doctor to diagnose.