4 days ago
Is Dubai chocolate the next Pumpkin Spice?
At Crumbl's Utah headquarters, employees are working on a new dessert with a chocolate and pistachio flavor that has set the internet on fire.
Enter the Dubai Chocolate Brownie, the cookie maker's attempt to cash in on a trend that has sent food companies racing to catch up. The new offering, with ingredients that have proven to be expensive and sometimes difficult to source, will hit stores in the coming months, Crumbl said.
The confection known as Dubai chocolate, legendary across the internet and a recent hit with many Americans, typically involves a shell of rich chocolate filled with pistachio cream and a shredded dough known as kataifi. Like many other recent food fads, it took off after an influencer promoted it on TikTok. Unlike others, it has triggered supply-chain squeezes, shaken up German courts and caused a run on U.K. grocery stores, forcing them to impose purchasing limits.
It has also spurred some of the biggest food companies in America to consider whether the Dubai chocolate flavor might endure as a future classic, like a pumpkin spice or salted caramel.
The internet's acceleration of flavor trends is forcing brands to become more nimble and adventurous. Grocery stores and restaurants say they're focused on 'social listening"—corporate-speak for keeping a close eye on Instagram. The art, Crumbl's co-founder Sawyer Hemsley says, is distinguishing a true underlying shift in consumer taste from a short-lived trend.
'It's undeniable that the internet has accelerated the pace at which flavor profiles emerge, spread and evolve," Hemsley says. 'We've seen firsthand how what might've once taken years to catch on, can now reach global audiences in a matter of weeks."
The global markets for pumpkin spice and matcha, a flavor from the finely ground powder of green tea, are now each valued north of $1 billion, and both flavors exploded thanks to the web. But these were slow burns. Pumpkin spice goes back to the 1930s, when spice maker McCormick released its pumpkin-spice pie mix. The release of 2003's Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte accelerated its popularity. Matcha has climbed steadily in the U.S. since a surge in interest around 2015.
And not every trend that succeeds on the internet makes it in the long run. A whipped drink made with instant coffee that became an early TikTok star during the pandemic has faded into distant internet memory.
Businesses have been laser-focused on gauging what flavors will last. They look for immediate consumer interest, but prolonged demand is important, too. If customers tend to return for more, it's a sign that the fad could be something more.
Dubai chocolate goes back to 2021 at Fix Dessert Chocolatier in its namesake city, when the shop's co-founder Sarah Hamouda designed a chocolate bar to satisfy a pregnancy craving. She called it the 'Can't Get Knafeh of It" bar, after a popular Middle Eastern dessert made with kataifi. Somewhere along the way, the world started calling it Dubai chocolate. 'It's funny," Hamouda says. 'We never came up with this nickname ourselves."
Two years later, United Arab Emirates influencer Maria Vehera posted a video of herself eating one of the gooey bars on TikTok, garnering millions of views and triggering candy shops around the world to start marketing their own versions.
Dubai chocolate has since been going strong, with companies all over the world marketing the flavor in a variety of products including cheesecakes, syrups, coffees, milkshakes and bars of all shapes and sizes. Competitors range from large companies to teams of entrepreneurs like those at Dubai Choclava, a New York startup selling what its founders call 'the Ferrari of Dubai chocolate," made with high-end organic ingredients.
Hamouda says she doesn't mind Dubai chocolate-inspired products but does object to bars made to look exactly like hers, with the same packaging. 'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?" she says. 'But copycats can't re-create the element of nostalgia that's intentionally baked into every layer of every Fix dessert bar."
This year, Dubai chocolate has entered the mainstream: large food brands like Crumbl, Trader Joe's, Aldi, Lidl, Shake Shack and Dunkin' Donuts are announcing spinoffs, betting on the pistachio-chocolate-pastry combo as a flavor profile of the future. Chocolate and pistachio has been a mainstay of fine dining for years, Shake Shack executive chef John Karangis says—but never a commercial smash. At Crumbl, executives thought of pistachio as a weak flavor associated with disappointing sales.
Shake Shack's limited-run Dubai Chocolate Pistachio Shake in April ran out of stock in hours across the country, and Lidl's U.S. launch of its Dubai-style chocolate bar in June sold out within a day in some stores.
For makers, Dubai chocolate has brought with it supply-chain and financial nightmares. Kataifi dough has been hard for some companies to procure. Chocolate is a difficult bet for food companies these days, as weather conditions in West Africa have sent cocoa prices soaring to as much as $10,000 a metric ton this year after hovering below $3,000 a metric ton for years. Demand for pistachios, and their prices, are rising worldwide, according to the Administrative Committee for Pistachios in California. Shake Shack and Crumbl both say they have devoted significant resources to tracking down ingredients.
A hiccup for the flavor came this month as the Food and Drug Administration announced a recall of a pistachio and cacao spread sold in World Market stores across the U.S., due to salmonella contamination.
In Germany, the candy hit legal turbulence as a candy importer sued grocery chain Aldi Süd, contending that Dubai chocolate must actually come from Dubai. German courts have handed down conflicting verdicts; in June, a court in Cologne ruled against Aldi. Across the U.S., more than a dozen businesses have filed trademark applications for their Dubai chocolate products in recent months.
Companies are still trying to understand why the flavor gained so much traction, and what that means for the future. Some people suggest consumers are interested in desserts with a savory element. Others think customers are pleasantly surprised by the crispy texture. At Shake Shack, director of global culinary and product development Jim Frisch suspects that Americans are interested in the idea of Dubai itself. 'You have this exotic place that is known for its grandeur," he says. 'Our guests are very adventurous…they want that global experience of trying new things."
Whether or not Dubai chocolate endures to become a classic flavor, the pace of change isn't likely to let up. Lidl recently rolled out what it is betting is the next Dubai chocolate, even though its first Dubai-style chocolate bar only hit shelves in the U.S. last month. 'Angel Hair Chocolate," filled with Turkish cotton candy, raspberry chocolate and creamy pistachio, arrived at Lidl stores in the U.S. on July 18.
