via @cookitgirleats
These food items are engineered to appeal to our tastebuds and the algorithm—some brands do this better than others. Crumbl Cookies has taken the internet’s stage recently, garnering over 9 million followers on their own TikTok page and hundreds of millions of views racked up by independent creators showing off their latest cookie haul. Beyond simply offering camera-worthy sweet treats, Crumbl has optimized its business model for the online sphere. Every week, they release a new lineup of flavors. They’re constantly rotating, changing, and introducing new creations, from “Churro Toffee White Chip” to “Frosted Strawberry (ft. Pop Tarts).” This constant menu changeup is catered to the influencer hustle, in which you need to constantly pump out fresh content to stay relevant. There’s an ever-flowing opportunity for unboxings, mukbangs, and even Crumbl “spoilers” that leak the menu before it’s officially released. Crumbl keeps up with that pace so its cookies can always be at the top of the feed. The logistical complexity and immense cost required to run a large-scale business in that manner must be worth the publicity.
Countless fast food ventures aim to operate in similar ways, though Crumbl seems to be the only one operating at such a breakneck pace. Starbucks does this technique with their seasonal menu items (remember when everyone was talking about putting olive oil in their coffee?) Chili’s recently found great success with its “Triple Dipper,” a make-your-own combo menu item that’s captured the attention of the internet with its mouth-watering cheese pulls.
There seem to be a few secret ingredients to the viral menu item: It has to be visually appealing to a camera (bright colors, crispy textures, and a visual consistency across locations help). It has to be somewhat controversial, or at least discussion-worthy. And it has to be widely available. If all those ingredients are present, the reward is hundreds of millions of views, which leads to hundreds of millions of dollars.
via @eatsbynat
These recent examples are far from the first to catch the internet’s attention. The McRib was an early example of this—its limited seasonality spiked interest and inspired countless memes and general internet buffoonery in the early aughts. But food companies now are so attuned to the needs and wants of the internet that they’ve honed their strategies to be specifically catered to a TikTok feed. It becomes a weird snake-eating-its-own-tail situation where food companies try to meet the internet’s demand, which in turn changes the internet’s taste, and the algorithm ends up influencing the way we eat.
On the consumer side, the drive to purchase from Crumbl or order a Triple Dipper becomes less about fulfilling a desire to eat something delicious than it is about participating in a trend. You’re there to taste the real-life version of the pictures you’ve seen online, and to talk about it online. The sweet/salty satiation is merely a side effect. Plus, a six-pack of Crumbl cookies will run you anywhere from $28 to $32. They’re neither affordable nor nourishing, but they exist to be consumed on a mass scale. It’s not a cookie, it’s a piece of internet culture. They’ve crossed over from the realm of food and become memes, at least in the Merriam-Webster sense of the word meme: “An amusing or interesting item [...] or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media.”
These viral menu items also bring the much-discussed model of overconsumption to the realm of food. In other spheres, overconsumption might mean Apple’s planned obsolescence scheme that somehow always leaves you needing the newest iPhone, or the perceived pressure to buy each new workout set Lululemon puts out. But overconsumption when it comes to food is a tricky subject. We need food to survive in a way we don’t need other consumer products. This type of viral consumption of food isn’t about nourishment, it’s about capitalism. The resources that must go into Crumbl's rapidly changing menu don’t scream sustainability.
These types of treats serve a necessary purpose in our lives. If you told me I couldn’t eat dessert for the rest of my life, I would have to deeply consider whether or not life was still worth living. If you specifically told me I could never have a Pumpkin Spice Latte again, I would weep a single tear. In a world that’s chock-full of suffering, treats are an easy and cheap way to make ourselves feel better. There isn’t anything wrong with that. What bothers me is that these treats aren’t born from a place of delight, they are born from a company’s insatiable hunger to generate profits. The internet has already commandeered so much of our attention. Do we really need it to live in our digestive systems as well?