Chips Ahoy faces backlash from lifelong fans after cookie recipe is quietly altered: ‘Absolutely shameful’
Cookie fans brand the new Chips Ahoy! recipe as ‘terrible’ and ‘really terrible’ after the iconic American brand changed the ingredients earlier this year.
The company debuted a new recipe for its original cookie in March — the snack’s biggest update in nearly a decade.
Bosses said the new ‘MMMproved’ biscuit had been revamped to include chocolate chips with a higher cocoa content and ‘just the right biscuit texture’.
The development of the new recipe took more than four years and testers considered 60 different recipes before arriving at the final choice.
But many Americans are taking to social media to express their disgust at the switch to the beloved snack — with some even vowing never to buy the brand again.
Chips Ahoy is the best-selling brand of chocolate chip cookies in the US, accounting for more than half of cookies sold. A 13 oz package costs about $4 in stores.
The company debuted a new recipe for its original cookie in March — the snack’s biggest update in nearly a decade
One user wrote on Reddit: ‘Really terrible. Absolutely shameful that someone lit this green. I’ve been eating Chips Ahoy all my life, but this is worse than the worse low budget store brands. I will never buy again. Sad.’
Others wondered why the company would change the recipe of their most popular cookie.
‘I used to love Chips Ahoy. I had one of the new ones and threw away a whole party size box,” wrote another.
Someone else simply said: ‘Chips Ahoy’s “new” recipe sucks.
One of the complaints from frustrated customers is that the cookies are ‘stale’, ‘overcooked’ and have an ‘unpleasant vanilla aftertaste’.
‘I’m going to stock up on the originals as soon as I can find them. New flavors of a darker chocolate with a nasty vanilla aftertaste,” another disgruntled customer wrote on Reddit.
The updated recipe features ‘specially blended’ chocolate chips with a higher cocoa content and a higher concentrated Madagascar vanilla extract.
Chips Ahoy! Cookies have more than 53 percent of the market share for chocolate chip cookies in the U.S., the company’s senior director Sabrina Sierant said in a rack.
The company – owned by giant Mondelez International, which also owns Oreo and Cadbury – has been making biscuits since the 1960s.
According to research agency Euromonitor International, Chips Ahoy! tops the cookie category worldwide and has a market share of more than 10 percent.
One of the complaints from frustrated customers is that the cookies are ‘stale’, ‘overcooked’ and have an ‘unpleasant vanilla aftertaste’.
Cocoa prices have been rising since the second half of 2023 due to the poor climate
But the classic brand isn’t the only one to update its products over the past year.
Cocoa prices have soared in recent months due to poor climate and bean blight in West Africa, where 70 percent of global cocoa production takes place.
This, in turn, has tightened supply and sent prices skyrocketing.
This has led to some confectionery brands launching more non-chocolate treats – or adapting existing recipes.
For example, tThe latest addition to the permanent flavor lineup at Hershey’s is a Chocolate Frosted Donut flavor Kit Kat bar — which is only partially dipped in chocolate instead of completely covered — Bloomberg reported earlier this year.