Three Million Cookies Baked, One Tunnel Oven Survived, and a Target Launch Nobody Took for Granted: Fat And Weird Cookie Company Turns Eight
Fat And Weird Cookie Company | 8th Anniversary Year in Review
Eight years.
That number lands differently depending on where you are in the Fat And Weird Cookie Company story. If you have been here since 2018, eight years is the full arc: the beginning, the expensive mistakes that got documented, the community that stayed close through the hard parts, the flavors and the drops and the seasonal packs and all the moments that made following this brand feel more like following a story than following a business. If you found the brand recently, maybe at a Target in the Cookie and Cracker aisle or through a video that caught your attention, eight years is the context that explains why the people behind the product react the way they do when milestones arrive.
They react the way people react when they know exactly how close things came to not working out.
This year was the fullest, most consequential, most exhausting, most joyful year in the history of Fat And Weird Cookie Company. Here is everything that happened in it.
The Rebrand: Everything Changed at Once
When Fat And Weird Cookie Company decided to rebrand, the word rebrand did not fully capture the scope of what they were committing to. This was not a logo refresh. This was not a packaging update. This was everything, all at once, with the community watching in real time because that is how Fat And Weird Cookie Company operates.
New logo. New look across social media. New packaging for the cookies. New shipping boxes, which went through a manufacturing delay that sent orders out in plain brown boxes with stickers while the community waited and Aubrie asked honestly whether the box even matters. New roll film packaging for the cookies themselves, which required two rounds of samples before round two came in looking exactly like it was supposed to.
Every surface the customer touches or sees on the way to a Fat And Weird Cookie Company cookie was updated. The booth at the Sweets and Snacks Expo got a full redesign. The website was rebuilt. The merch was refreshed. The visual identity that carries the brand into retail, into buyer meetings, into the hands of a customer at Target who has never heard of them, was created from scratch over the course of a year while the brand was simultaneously doing everything else on this list.
And throughout all of it, the community was part of the process. The rebrand carried input from the people who had been ordering and following and advocating for the brand since before it looked like it does now. That is not marketing language. The logo the brand wears today reflects the opinions of the people who told Fat And Weird Cookie Company what felt right and what did not when they were in the middle of figuring it out.
Over Twenty New Flavors and Three Million Cookies
The number three million sounds large because it is large.
Fat And Weird Cookie Company baked over three million cookies this year. Three million cookies that are each made with a unique recipe, not a standardized base dough adapted for different toppings, but a dough built from the ground up for that specific flavor. Three million cookies that each have a stuffed center core, a gooey interior that breaks open when you bite through, which means three million cookies worth of filling that had to be developed and incorporated and baked correctly at the volume that three million represents.
That number exists alongside the release of over twenty brand new cookie flavors, packaged in creative limited collections including the Weirder Things Pack, a seasonal assortment that brought the brand's creative instincts to a theme the community already loved. Twenty-plus flavors in a single year, on top of a lineup that already exceeded 150 unique recipes, means the team was developing, testing, and finalizing new cookies at a pace that does not leave a lot of room for anything else.
They also launched new merch, which means the brand's physical presence in the world expanded beyond the cookie itself into the wearable and collectible space that a brand with a real community eventually grows into.
Three million cookies. Twenty-plus flavors. A rebrand. And everything else still to come.
HEB: Stuffed Frozen Cookie Dough Bites
Before the Target conversation was the HEB conversation.
Fat And Weird Cookie Company launched their stuffed frozen cookie dough bites at HEB, the Texas-based grocery institution that is not a small thing to land as a retail partner and not a quiet entry point into the grocery world. The frozen cookie dough bites represent a format extension: the stuffed center philosophy that defines every Fat And Weird Cookie Company product, translated into a frozen format that the customer takes home and bakes themselves, giving the experience of a freshly baked stuffed cookie without the shipping logistics of a product that has already been baked.
HEB is where the brand learned what it looks like to have a product on a grocery shelf before Target was the destination. The lessons from that placement, the packaging requirements, the buyer conversations, the category dynamics of appearing alongside established brands in a refrigerated case, informed everything that came after it.
The Sweets and Snacks Expo: A New Booth, an Award, and the Connections That Matter
The Sweets and Snacks Expo is where the food and confections industry gathers every year, and it is where the decisions that put products on national retail shelves often begin. Fat And Weird Cookie Company showed up this year with a booth that reflected the new brand identity, the fully rebranded version of the company rather than the previous visual identity, and the products that were ready to compete for attention in a room full of established players.
They won an award.
That is not a minor detail. An award at the Sweets and Snacks Expo in a competitive category is recognition from within the industry that what you are making is worth noticing, and it comes at the specific moment when Fat And Weird Cookie Company was trying to be noticed by the buyers who decide what ends up in the stores that the brand had been working toward for years. The booth performed. The product performed. The connections that were made in that space opened conversations that a brand building toward national retail distribution needs to have.
The Expo was not just an appearance. It was a proof point.
Lil Chippy: The Mascot the Community Helped Build
Fat And Weird Cookie Company does not have a mascot because it seemed like a good marketing idea. It has a mascot because the community was part of building one.
Lil Chippy, the $7,000 cookie character with the chef hat and the little shoes and the eye protection that Aubrie took off during the unboxing, exists in his current form because the people who follow Fat And Weird Cookie Company had input into what he would look like. The design brief was Aubrie's: dumb, cute, and innocent. The feedback that shaped the final result came from the community that has always been invited into the creative process rather than presented with finished decisions.
When the box arrived and Aubrie made everyone put him back because she was not there for the opening and was not going to miss it, and when she finally got him out and said she felt like he did not look creepy at all, and when she put the costume on with Ashley's help and could barely see and told Brad in her second breath that this was the best thing she had ever done for the brand: all of that was the conclusion of a process the community participated in.
Lil Chippy is theirs as much as he is Aubrie's. That is why the caption said they were obsessed.
The New Website
A new website sounds like a logistical milestone. At the scale Fat And Weird Cookie Company operates, it is a strategic one.
A direct-to-consumer brand that ships cookies across the country, runs limited drops that sell out within hours, hosts a product lineup of over 150 flavors, and is simultaneously expanding into retail needs a website that can hold all of that without breaking, without confusing the customer who has been ordering for years, and without turning away the customer who just discovered the brand at Target and came online to find out more.
The new website launched this year as part of the same comprehensive update that touched every other surface of the brand identity. It is the destination everything else points toward, and this year it finally reflects the version of the brand that the rest of the world was already seeing in the new packaging and the new booth and the new logo.
Lil Weirdos: Sold Out. Again. And Again.
The Lil Weirdos Mini Stuffed Cookies launched, and the community kept selling them out.
Their minds were blown.
This is the honest version of what it feels like when you build something for a long time and then put it in front of the people who have been waiting, and the response is faster and larger than the system you built to handle it. Lil Weirdos sold out not once but repeatedly, which is the kind of market signal that validates every decision that went into creating the format: the bite-sized version of the stuffed center cookie, the personal portion that makes the guilt equation irrelevant, the product that became the centerpiece of the retail strategy and the production line investment and every stressful month Brad spent trying to bring it to scale.
The community kept clearing them out. Fat And Weird Cookie Company kept making more. The demand confirmed what the brand believed when they started building toward this: the product was right and the market was waiting.
The Tunnel Oven and the Rollercoaster of Disasters
One hundred feet. That is how long the tunnel oven Fat And Weird Cookie Company bought for the special project was.
If you followed the "If This Fails I'll Lose Everything" series with Brad, you know what came next. If you did not, here is the compressed version: the tunnel oven arrived, ran correctly, and then the belt snapped. The mixer went down. The bagging machine followed. A two-week extension was granted on a deadline that was already real. An oven expert was brought in. The production line was moved to Atlanta. A three-inch cutting knife broke before the full production run began and then broke again during it. Brad said on camera that these had been the most stressful months of his life.
The rollercoaster of disasters was not a metaphor. It was a sequence of documented failures that the brand shared publicly because that is what Fat And Weird Cookie Company does: they show you the hard parts in real time rather than announcing the successful conclusion after the fact.
They almost did not make it.
They made it.
Target: The Year's Biggest Chapter
With your support.
Those three words are in the year-in-review post because they are the true version of how Fat And Weird Cookie Company launched Lil Weirdos Mini Cookies at Target. Not through a marketing budget or a PR strategy or a standard retail pathway. Through years of building a community that kept ordering, kept sharing, kept selling out limited drops, kept showing up for the hard documentation of the tunnel oven and the knife and the stressful months, and kept making the case that this brand's product was worth a Target shelf.
The shelf label that Aubrie and Brad found in the Cookie and Cracker aisle, with "Fat and Weird Cookie" already printed on it at $5.99, was the most emotional single moment of the year. Aubrie almost had a heart attack. Brad said it gave him anxiety. The cashier on her second day of work said it was the coolest thing that had happened to her yet when Brad explained that they were the ones who made the product and had brought it in themselves to be the first buyers.
Eight years. A 100-foot tunnel oven. A rebrand and a mascot and a Sweets and Snacks Expo award and a HEB launch and three million cookies and twenty-plus new flavors.
All of it led to a shelf in the Cookie and Cracker aisle at Target, where a brand that started in 2018 with good product and honest community-building now has a slot with their name on it and a price that says this belongs here.
What Eight Years Actually Means
Eight years is long enough to know that nothing about building a brand this way is guaranteed.
The expensive mistakes got documented. The equipment failures got documented. The delays and the extensions and the moments when things looked like they might not work got documented, because Fat And Weird Cookie Company has always operated on the principle that the community that is following you deserves to know where things actually stand.
That principle is not just a content strategy. It is the reason the community that showed up during the hard parts is the same community that kept selling out the Lil Weirdos and made the Target launch possible. People stay close to brands that tell them the truth, and Fat And Weird Cookie Company has been telling the truth since year one.
Eight years in, the brand is at Target. Three million cookies baked in a single year. A mascot who is going in the van every day if Aubrie has anything to say about it. A rebrand completed across every surface. A 100-foot tunnel oven that almost broke the whole project and eventually did the job it was bought to do.
And a community that has been with them for all of it.
Happy eighth birthday, Fat And Weird Cookie Company. The ninth year is going to be something to watch.
Year Eight at a Glance
- Years in business: Eight
- Cookies baked this year: Over three million
- New cookie flavors released: Over twenty, including limited packs like the Weirder Things Pack
- Full rebrand completed: New logo, social presence, packaging, shipping boxes, roll film, booth, and website
- HEB launch: Stuffed frozen cookie dough bites
- Sweets and Snacks Expo: New booth design, award won, major industry connections made
- New mascot: Lil Chippy, designed with community input, arrived in costume form
- New website: Launched as part of the full rebrand
- Lil Weirdos: Launched, sold out repeatedly, blew the team's minds
- Tunnel oven: 100 feet, purchased for a special project, survived a documented rollercoaster of disasters
- Target: Launched Lil Weirdos Mini Cookies with community support
FAQ: Fat And Weird Cookie Company 8th Anniversary and Year in Review
How old is Fat And Weird Cookie Company? Fat And Weird Cookie Company turned eight years old in 2025. The brand launched in 2018 and has been building its direct-to-consumer cookie business, retail presence, and community continuously since then. The eighth year was the most eventful in the brand's history.
What did Fat And Weird Cookie Company accomplish in their eighth year? In year eight, Fat And Weird Cookie Company completed a full rebrand across every surface, launched more than twenty new cookie flavors, baked over three million cookies, launched stuffed frozen cookie dough bites at HEB, attended the Sweets and Snacks Expo with a new booth and won an award, launched a new website, designed and revealed their mascot Lil Chippy with community input, launched Lil Weirdos Mini Stuffed Cookies which repeatedly sold out, purchased a 100-foot tunnel oven for a major production project, and launched Lil Weirdos Mini Cookies at Target.
How many cookies did Fat And Weird Cookie Company bake this year? Fat And Weird Cookie Company baked over three million cookies in their eighth year. This total reflects the full-size original lineup, the Lil Weirdos mini cookies, and the production required for the retail expansion into Target.
What is the Fat And Weird Cookie Company rebrand? The Fat And Weird Cookie Company rebrand was a comprehensive update of every customer-facing element of the brand identity, completed over the course of year eight. It included a new logo, new social media presentation, new roll film cookie packaging, new shipping boxes, a new Sweets and Snacks Expo booth, and a new website. The community provided input throughout the process, particularly on the visual identity decisions.
What is the Lil Weirdos Mini Stuffed Cookie? Lil Weirdos are Fat And Weird Cookie Company's bite-sized version of their original 5.5oz mega stuffed cookies. They contain the same gooey stuffed center core and unique recipes as the full-size lineup in a personal portion format. They launched in year eight, sold out repeatedly, and became the centerpiece of the brand's retail expansion into Target.
What was the Fat And Weird Cookie Company tunnel oven for? The 100-foot tunnel oven was purchased to build the production line needed to manufacture Lil Weirdos Mini Cookies at the scale required for the Target retail launch. The production line project was documented in the "If This Fails I'll Lose Everything" series by Brad, and included a significant series of equipment failures, deadline extensions, and production challenges before eventually succeeding.
Did Fat And Weird Cookie Company win an award? Yes. Fat And Weird Cookie Company won an award at the Sweets and Snacks Expo in year eight, where they also debuted a new booth reflecting their rebranded visual identity. The Sweets and Snacks Expo is a major industry trade show where food and confections brands connect with retail buyers and industry professionals.
How is Fat And Weird Cookie Company at Target? Fat And Weird Cookie Company's Lil Weirdos Mini Stuffed Cookies are now available in the Cookie and Cracker aisle at Target stores. The launch followed years of retail development, the production line investment in the tunnel oven, and the full company rebrand that made the brand retail-ready. The shelf label with the Fat and Weird Cookie name and $5.99 price was already printed and in place at Target before the product arrived to fill the shelf.
Who is Lil Chippy? Lil Chippy is Fat And Weird Cookie Company's first official mascot. The community helped design him. He is a cookie character wearing a chef hat and little shoes, built to look dumb, cute, and innocent, which was the exact design brief Aubrie gave to the people who created him. Lil Chippy exists both as a collectible figure and as a full wearable mascot costume. Aubrie has committed to using the costume every day in content.
Where can I follow Fat And Weird Cookie Company for year nine updates? Follow Fat And Weird Cookie Company on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok for new flavor drops, retail expansion updates, Lil Chippy content, limited pack releases, and everything else that is coming in year nine.
Eight years down. Everything on the list above accomplished in just twelve months. The community that made this year what it was is the same one that is going to make year nine something worth watching. Follow Fat And Weird Cookie Company on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and stay close because the brand that baked three million cookies, built a mascot, bought a tunnel oven, and made it to Target in year eight is just getting started.
