Two cookie companies with ties to Utah were pitted against each other on a recent episode of a popular YouTube series. One was praised for its ooey, gooey treats, while the other lost points for lacking dazzle.
Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal, the hosts of “Good Mythical Morning,” a YouTube channel with 18.9 million subscribers, tried four cookies and one non-cookie dessert from both Crumbl and Mrs. Fields.
They were happy with almost all the offerings, although Neal was a bit disturbed by the size and richness of Crumbl’s German chocolate cake.
“It’s just too much,” he said, giving it a score of four out of 10.
Even with that low score, Crumbl came out on top of Mrs. Fields after five rounds. McLaughlin and Neal loved the size, texture and freshness of Crumbl’s desserts.
The “Good Mythical Morning” video on Crumbl and Mrs. Fields has been view 775,000 times since it was released on Monday.
Crumbl in Utah
Crumbl was founded in Utah by cousins Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley. The first location opened in 2017 in Logan, Utah, while Hemsley was finishing his degree at Utah State, according to the school.
Crumbl now has nearly 900 locations around the world, including more than 20 in Utah.
The company says it sells more than 1 million cookies per day.
Mrs. Fields in Utah
Mrs. Fields Cookies was founded by Debbi Fields in California in 1977, according to Eater. But it, too, is linked to Utah.
Fields moved to the Park City area in Utah in the 1980s and built a large house, called River View Ranch, situated on more than 200,000 acres of land. It was her luxurious home base as her cookie brand continued to grow.
In the 1990s, Fields sold control of Mrs. Fields Cookies, although she remained involved in the company, Eater reported.
Crumbl review
“Good Mythical Morning” was not the only prominent reviewer to put a spotlight on Crumbl this week.
The cookies were covered by The Washington Post on Wednesday — and this second taste test didn’t turn out as well for Crumbl.
“For a professional assessment on the sugary juggernaut, I enlisted several of my baking-expert colleagues in a taste test,” wrote the Post’s Emily Heil. “Their post-nibbling consensus? Crumbl cookies are underwhelming, mostly because they seem underbaked, a ding shared by many social media critics.”
But as she recounted her colleagues’ negative reactions, Heil noted that Crumbl undoubtedly has plenty of fans.
Lines form outside locations across the country, as people scramble to taste new flavors each week, she wrote.