Unofficial Crumbl Cookie pop-up in Australia goes viral for “jump scare” prices & stale products

An unofficial Crumbl Cookie pop-up store in Australia has gone viral due to “jump scare” pricing, long queue times and stale products.

Crumble is a popular chain of bakeries in the United States and Canada. Despite having thousands of stores in these two countries, the franchise has not yet expanded to other parts of the world.

The chain is known for its specialty cookies, which include flavors like Pumpkin Cake, Ultimate Peanut Butter, and Oatmeal Chocolate Chip.

Given the demand for these cookies and the lack of stores elsewhere, fans in Australia have taken advantage of this demand via a new pop-up stall that has gone viral online. Situated in Bondi Beach, Australia, these Crumbl Cookies resellers, who go by Crumblsydney on TikTok, organized a pop-up store to sell these viral cookies to local customers.

However, they have been called out for “jump scare” price gouging and, to make matters worse, selling allegedly stale products to customers, some of whom have waited in hour-long queues to get their hands on the treat.

TikToker sofiaqistinee gave Crumbl Cookies a six out of ten in her review but added, “In terms of freshness, ” they were a “0 out of 5.” 

“They were definitely stale, and I’m going to be honest, legit half of them were … falling apart. It was just low-key disappointing … they tasted very dry,” added jassy_.lifestyle1.

Fellow TikToker elle_easternsuburbsmum revealed that, after waiting “over an hour” to get her hands on some Crumbl Cookies, she paid $150 AUD for just ten cookies. To make matters worse, she added that she was “really underwhelmed” by the product and noted that the cookies weren’t fresh.

Her review of the cookies, viewed over 1.1 million times in less than 48 hours, generated so much attention that Sawyer Hemsley, the founder of Crumbl, commented on the video.

“You need to try them fresh in the US! PS: This pop-up is not affiliated with Crumbl Cookies,” wrote Hemsley.

Following Hemsley’s words, Crumblesydney defended the sky-high prices online and clarified that it is not an official store for the chain in a Google document shared on their TikTok account.

“We never claimed to be an official Crumbl store. This was clearly stated in bio and our comments. We aimed to bring the authentic Crumbl cookies to Australia by importing them directly from the USA,” they wrote.

They then broke down how, due to how expensive it was to get the cookies over to Australia, which they revealed cost just under $3,700 AUD to package and ship over, they were never focused on profit but instead “aimed to bring the cookies to Crumbl fans” in Australia.