Dubai Chewy Cookie craze fades fast: key imports down 90% in six months

The Dubai Chewy Cookie craze, which sparked product shortages earlier this year, has cooled sharply in just six months. Imports of key ingredients, inspection records for related products and trademark filings tied to the trend have all plunged more than 90 percent from their peaks.

An analysis of data from the Korea Customs Service, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety and the Korea Intellectual Property Office — released Sunday by Jung Il-young, a Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker on the National Assembly's Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee — showed that pistachio imports, a primary ingredient in the Dubai Chewy Cookie, peaked at 731 tons in February before plunging to 54 tons in July, a drop of 92.6 percent in just five months.

The import value of pistachios fell in tandem, declining 93.6 percent over the same period, from $15.46 million to $990,000.

A similar pattern emerged in data on kadayif, the shredded pastry that gives the cookie its crispy texture. Import inspections for processed foods with "kadayif" in their product names fell 93.5 percent, from 340 cases in February to 22 in June. Pistachio-related import inspections dropped 92.6 percent over the same stretch, from 95 cases to seven.

Trademark filings also fell sharply. According to the Korea Intellectual Property Office, applications containing the words "Dubai," "kadayif," "Kadayif," "pistachio" or "Pistachio" peaked at 23 in January before dropping to just one per month from April through June — a decline of 95.7 percent from the high.

As the Dubai Chewy Cookie gained popularity on social media, ingredient imports and related product launches surged at the same time. But with the trend now past its peak, the market's momentum has faded just as quickly.

"It is positive when new trends spark diverse products and new businesses that energize the market," Jung said. "But if small business owners and self-employed entrepreneurs rush to stockpile ingredients or overinvest to chase a short-lived fad, it can become a serious burden." He added that providing sufficient market information to help business operators make sound judgments in line with rapidly shifting consumer trends is equally important.