How the cookie crumbles: Dining hall looking for new M&M cookie distributor

For some students, the return to UNC from Winter Break was marked by a small tragedy — the M&M cookies at Rams Head and Lenoir dining halls are decidedly different.

Some students took to social media to voice their frustrations over Carolina Dining Services’ decision to change the cookie recipe.

One such student is Janet Haver, a first-year journalism major, who was one of the first to tweet to CDS about the change.

“The new cookies use a different kind of M&M’s, almost like those mini-M&M’s,” Haver said in an interview.

“They don’t have the same taste and neither does the cookie. The old ones were amazing though. The big pieces of M&M’s and the actual cookie part was delicious, and the sole contributor to my freshman 15.”

CDS responded to Haver’s inquiry in a tweet, saying they are trying to get the cookies back.

Alas, poor M&M cookies! I knew them, Horatio. We're trying to get them back but it looks like they may be no more, sorry . . . https://t.co/4WZnoElY9o

— Carolina Dining (@CDSatUNC) January 12, 2017

Haver said she was shocked by CDS’s response to her tweet.

“I was pretty upset at the note that they might not come back,” Haver said.

“They are one of my favorite parts of eating in the dining halls, and so I hope they’re eventually able to see how good those cookies were and how crucial they are to the dining aspect of Carolina.”

Michael Gueiss, the executive chef for CDS, said CDS’s cookie distributor, Otis Spunkmeyer, discontinued the beloved M&M cookies.

Gueiss said they’re trying to solve the cookie problem.

“It seems that our distributor has stopped carrying the old cookie,” Gueiss said in an email.

“The cookie that everyone is talking about is the Carnival cookie. We are working on finding a suitable replacement if I cannot get the old cookies back.”

This move to get the old cookies back may prove to be a bad thing for some students like Kassandra Moore, a first-year biology major, who actually prefers the new cookie recipe.

“I have noticed a difference in the cookies,” Moore said.

“They are way better than they were before and I like that they’re softer, because I can remember with the old cookies they were usually always hard and honestly, not that good.”

Some students do not feel as strongly as Moore or Haver and in fact are indifferent about the new M&M cookies.

“I’m really not that into the cookies,” Mercer Brady, a first-year history major, said. “I mean I love cookies and all, but the change isn’t really that big for me.”

Whatever the case may be, it appears the old M&M cookies may not be making a resurgence anytime soon, so students will have to adjust to the new recipe.

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