Hands were reaching over the counter before the labels went on.
At the M&S branch in Angel, Islington, a fresh tray of the supermarket’s viral chocolate cornflake cookies lasted roughly as long as it took shoppers to grab them.
Student Bery S. filmed the scramble on Thursday (5 November), and her TikTok video has now passed 642,000 views.
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To her, it looked like one thing.
“It reminded me of the panic buying during the pandemic,” the 31-year-old told Creatorzine.
Crowds circle the M&S bakery counter
“It was honestly chaotic,” Bery said.
“There was a crowd of people gathered around the bakery counter, all waiting for the freshly baked cookies to be baked and packaged.”
The moment the packs appeared, customers leaned in and walked off with several each.
One young customer didn’t fancy waiting at all.
He asked the worker packing the cookies to slide him one on the side, before a single label had gone on.
The worker refused, telling him it wasn’t allowed.
A colleague at the front told Bery it had been wild since launch day, and that shoppers basically weren’t letting staff do their jobs.
“The staff were really overwhelmed, and I was asking them if they were okay,” Bery said.
‘As if they contained gold or money’
“As soon as the cookies were available, people started grabbing multiple packs, and it felt like everyone was in a rush – as if they contained gold or money,” she said.
Bery kept her distance.
“Honestly, I was shocked and embarrassed. I purposely stood away from the crowd because I was so overstimulated by what I saw. I felt so sorry for the staff.”
She had tried her luck 45 minutes earlier and found no queue and an empty display.
Staff told her when the next batch would land, so she carried on shopping and came back to a crowd.
She did get a cookie in the end. One had been knocked over in the rush, and a member of staff picked it up and handed it to her.
“But honestly, it was chaos,” she said. “I’ll be honest, though – the cookie was delicious.”
Of course it was.
One red-haired shopper in the footage appears to collect several packets.
Bery stressed that people who know the woman said in the comments she was also picking up cookies for elderly shoppers and friends who couldn’t reach the counter.
The £3.40 cookies behind the scramble
The Chocolate and Cornflake Cookies went on sale on Wednesday (4 November) in what M&S calls its biggest-ever bakery launch.
A 365g pack of five costs £3.40.
They’re chewy, made with black treacle, and packed with caramel pieces, cornflakes and both milk and dark chocolate.
The hype started well before launch.
Kathryn Turner, M&S director of product development, has become an online star through videos showing off the retailer’s newest products, and she promoted the cookies on social media, calling them “delicious” and the developer’s “best yet”.
M&S has been approached for comment.
Why It Matters
Editorial view: Kathryn Turner isn’t a creator in the usual sense.
She’s a product director with a camera.
But her videos now shift stock the way a full-time influencer’s do, and Angel shows what happens when a brand’s own staff do the hype work. No paid partnership required.
Just one employee, one cookie and a phone.
Supermarket bakery launches now play out a lot like trainer drops, with TikTok building the anticipation and the in-store chaos becoming content in its own right.
Whether M&S can keep the shelves stocked is one question.
Whether the staff in Angel want it to is another.
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