Today, the race for highly decorative, creative, and gourmet cookies is closer than ever. The two corporate giants, Insomnia Cookies and Crumbl Cookies have been battling for cultural dominance over the trending cookie industry. Both companies release a weekly lineup of intriguing yet sickly sweet cookies, marketed to the kid inside all of us. Both companies follow in each other’s footprints in order to maintain cultural relevance, as seen through the layout of each store. Both stores are minimalistic in design, opting for white walls with accent colors; purple for Insomnia Cookies, and pink for Crumbl Cookies. 

When walking into the stores, I was met with a waft of sugar. I filed my way into the queue like a ride at an amusement park, as I waited  20 minutes for my specialized box of gourmet cookies. 

At Crumbl Cookies, I purchased the weekly rotation of flavors: Lemon Crinkle, topped with a heavy dusting of powdered sugar, Gingerbread Cake and Green Mint, topped with a pound of cavity-inducing frosting, and lastly a simple Chocolate Chip Cookie, made with milk chocolate chips instead of the traditional semi-sweet chocolate chips. Overall, the cookies produced by Crumbl Cookies were overwhelming to say the least. When biting into each cookie, I tasted processed sugar, rather than the unique and creative taste Crumble prides itself on. Crumbl puts emphasis on sugar and presentation rather than taste. However, among the mediocre batch of cookies, the Lemon Crinkle stood out due to its simplicity. The sour and sharp lemon flavor cut down on the overall sweetness of the cookie leaving a pleasant lemon aftertaste. Overall, Crumbl clearly focuses on producing creative and unique cookies, compromising the taste of their cookies and left me wanting more. 

Conversely, at Insomnia Cookies I ordered a 4-4 box, including four of their deluxe cookies and four of their regular cookies. The box included a mix of classic and deluxe cookies like Chocolate Chunk, Peanut Butter Chip, Snickerdoodle, M&M for the classic flavors, and Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup, Confetti, S’mores, and Triple Chocolate for the deluxe cookies. When trying each of the cookies from Insomnia, I was pleasantly surprised by their simple yet delightful taste, resulting in a homemade style cookie reminding me of my childhood. Insomnia Cookies takes a completely different approach to their gourmet cookies than Crumbl does: they put a greater emphasis on flavor rather than design. Insomnia’s product does not necessarily reinvent the cookie industry like Crumbl aims to do, but overall Insomnia leaves a more pleasant experience that is not met with Crumbl. 

Ultimately, these two cookie chains place their effort on different aspects of the cookie industry, creating two vastly different  experiences, with Insomina coming out on top.