Baked and Crumbl rivalry joined USU Day on the Quad
A wide grin spread across Brycee Sells’ face as she opened her small, white bag with the letters “Crumbl” printed on it.
She slowly pinched off a piece from her chocolate chip cookie, analyzing it, measuring the ratio of melted chocolate chips to the combination of flour, butter, eggs and sugar that makes up cookie dough.
“At this moment, I am team Crumbl,” she declared.
Standing in the same spot with her back turned to the “Crumbl” tent just minutes later, Olivia Williams voiced disdain because Crumbl’s rival, Baked, ran out of cookies before she could eat one.
“Baked is always my first choice,” she said.
Owners of the two cookie shops, one facing the mouth of Logan Canyon and the other sharing a parking lot with Costa Vida, say their geographical distance has allowed them to fit peacefully together in a town as small as Logan.
But Wednesday afternoon, the two businesses, which opened just days apart from each other, came head-to-head for the first time in their year-long history at Utah State University’s annual “Day on the Quad.”
Teniya Sonny, a Utah State senior, first noticed Baked as she walked in front of the Ray B. West building, where the cookie tent was stationed.
While waiting in line for a free Baked chocolate chip cookie, Sonny was approached by a friend asking if she’d like to try Crumbl instead. As a longtime cookie-lover disappointed in the “dry” cookie she received at Baked, Sonny was ecstatic to add another place to her routine.
“I had been hearing around that Crumbl is a lot better than Baked,” she said.
After finishing her entire cookie in one bite, Sonny confirmed the rumors: To her tastebuds, Crumbl was better than Baked.
While the two stores shared a venue for the first time Wednesday, friendly tensions have built between the two for about a year now.
Ben Johnson, owner and co-founder of Baked, said his colleagues planned to open shop in October of 2017, but after seeing social media promotion of Crumbl in September, the store rushed to get logistics taken care of and opened its doors just one day after Crumbl.
“We decided we were going to beat them off the line,” Johnson said. “We went from zero to fully functioning, fully legal, licenses, permits, everything in eight days.”
Johnson has heard several rumors claiming founders of the two stores were a married-then-divorced couple or a business partnership gone wrong, but he chuckles every time a new rumor is brought to his attention.
“In all honesty, all of these things were just awesome because they just fed the story,” he said.
Despite the contentious opinions from customers, owners of both stores say they feel nothing but support for one another.
“I don’t think there’s any bad blood,” said Abryanna Conteras, a manager at Crumbl. “We both just kind of keep to ourselves, we do our own thing.”
@alison_berg