The Fast Food Chocolate Chip Cookie You Should Avoid Buying

Whether you're on the go or simply need an afternoon pick-me-up, the option of quickly scoring a chocolate chip cookie from a fast food restaurant seems like a guaranteed win. Unfortunately, it is possible to botch a cookie recipe, and we found out the hard way. After sampling 8 different chocolate chip cookies sold at fast food restaurants, one cookie in particular dropped to the bottom of our ranking. 

The next time a cookie craving strikes, do yourself a favor and skip Arby's salted caramel and chocolate chip cookie. While the name of the cookie sounds promising, expectations and reality clash upon first bite. Instead of a textured cookie that offers just enough chew before giving way to a tender center, Arby's cookie challenged our senses. The cookie itself was noticeably hefty and thick, but the baked cookie seemed to crumble like sawdust on the tongue and left us wondering if the dough was adequately mixed before it was placed into the oven. The abundance of semi-sweet chocolate chips served as the redeeming factor of this treat, as the pieces presented the kind of melty goodness we like to experience in a fresh-out-of-the-oven treat. 

Sadly, whatever salted caramel that is promised on the label of Arby's cookies appears to be an afterthought in the cookie itself. The trace bits of caramel found tucked into the cookie left much to be desired, and finding the little pieces distributed within the treat appeared more like part of a culinary treasure hunt than an intentional feature of the recipe. While we like to see a nice proportion of chocolate chips dispersed throughout a cookie and the kind of consistency we can fully back, Arby's cookie missed the mark for our team and other food reviewers. 

We're not the only ones who noticed Arby's chocolate chip cookies fall apart easily and lack the advertised flavors. "It's not bad, but it's not very good," declared bakethecookieshoppe on TikTok. Another reviewer noticed that the weighty cookies were once doughy soft and noted that the cookies were initially sold warm in brown bags. Since the cookies began to be packaged in individually wrapped plastic wrappers, YouTuber theendorsement observes that these once-promising chocolate chip cookies now provide an entirely different experience. "I am beyond disappointed," he bemoaned upon handling the pre-packaged treat and pleaded with Arby's to bring back the originals. Maybe if we had sampled those initial cookies, we would have ranked this recipe higher up on our list.