Whole Foods' Customer-Favorite Chantilly Cake Faces 'Skimpflation'

These days, "shrinkflation" — when a company makes an item smaller, while keeping the same price or even increasing it — is everywhere. Its slightly lesser known brother, "skimpflation," a more subtle change for the worse in the quality of a product or its ingredients, is on the rise, and this has been nowhere more apparent than in the recent controversy about Whole Foods (under the ownership of Amazon). You see, it changed the recipe of its beloved Berry Chantilly Cake, for what many customers considered the worst — and social media put the grocery store chain on notice.

The cake, which is sold in individual slices and features mascarpone and cream, used to also include fresh berries stuffed between the layers. It was changed to instead include a thin layer of berry jam, with fruit on the side. One TikTok user, @culturework, also claimed that the slice of cake was much smaller than it had been, and their video, which has over 300,000 views, inspired many comments echoing @culturework's complaints over both the quality and the size of the cake.

@culturework

@Whole Foods Market my last little joy in this world and you took it. Fix it or im calling the health inspector on silverlake 🚨🚨🚨🚨#fyp

♬ original sound – culturework

Normally when a business shrinkflates or skimpflates an item, that's it — customers are stuck trying to keep shrinkflation from killing their budget, because the business gets the last say. And Whole Foods' initial response was along those lines, with the company stating on September 30 it had "aligned the flavor profile, size, packaging, and price so customers will have the same high-quality experience in each of our stores," per USA Today.

But then, after the furor on social media reached a fever pitch, the company actually reversed their course on October 4. In an interview with Today, a spokesperson for Whole Foods clarified that the new cake was, in fact, different from the Berry Chantilly cake, and that customer dissatisfaction had made the company rethink its decision: "Based on feedback from our customers, we will reintroduce single slices of the Berry Chantilly Cake that are the same as the classic our customers know and love," the spokesperson said. Crisis averted, Berry Chantilly cake lovers, but it does remain to be seen if Whole Foods makes good on its promises.