How I Started an Oreo Club in my Office

Xak and I share a Google calendar that is loaded with extremely important food holidays:

• National Hot Tea Day (January 12th)
• National Fried Chicken Day (July 6th)
• National Oreo Day (March 6th) 

It may be surprising that we care so much about a day dedicated to a store bought treat that isn’t normally consumed with either tea or coffee. After all, we are Scones and Doughns.

The thing is, we are kind of obsessed with Oreos. We have Oreos hanging up in our dining room, we’ve given out crocheted Oreos for gifts, we had Oreo cheesecake desserts at our wedding, and most importantly… we’ve been running an Oreo Club since 2018.

What is Oreo Club?

At Oreo Club, we taste and rate Oreos from all over the world. Each member tries an Oreo and provides their unfiltered comments, their thoughts on the smell, the taste, the appearance, the crunchiness of the cookie, anything and everything Oreo related.

We capture all this data into a gigantic spreadsheet, including the following:

• how the taster eats the Oreo (Ex. split apart, bite directly into it, taste the cream first?)
• would the taster purchase the Oreo again
• would the taster eat the Oreo with milk?
• did the taster finish the entire Oreo

At the end of the review, we ask for a number rating between 0-5 including decimal points. We also capture the sounds people make while eating, whether it’s a surprised and satisfied “yum!!” or any unpleasant sounds (“ew!”, “blehhhhh”)

To date, we’ve eaten, rated, and reviewed over 60+ Oreos from 13 countries.

How Oreo Club Started

When I visited Korea as a language student back in 2018, my main goals were to practice speaking the language and to eat as much delicious food as possible. 

On my last day in Seoul, I stopped at a Daiso and saw some Korean Oreos, which I quickly added to my shopping basket. The packaging was different from what you would typically see in an American grocery store. I decided to bring a few back home and share with my co-workers. After all, it’s probably not a good idea to eat five boxes of Oreos by yourself. Better to share the calories with others. 😏

The next week when I returned back to the office, I offered some of the Oreos to Xak and Pablo, who at the time sat in the same row as me. The comments were nuts! Since I had more cookies, I shared it with other teammates. Most people were surprised that Oreos were in Korea and then even more surprised at how significantly different a Korean Oreo tastes in comparison to an American Oreo. For example, the size of the cookie itself was smaller. The creme was similar to the thickness of an Oreo Thin and less sweet. The chocolate taste was different from American Oreos. Everyone had something to say.

A week later (and fully recovered from my jet lag), Xak triumphantly came into the office holding a package of Cherry Cola Oreos. As I gagged at the disgusting thought of a cherry cola flavored Oreo, Xak happily announced it also had pop rock candies in the creme to represent fizziness, causing further gagging from me. However, an evil thought popped into my head.

Ooooh, I bet everyone will hate these!

-Me, excited at the thought of my co-workers’ disgusted reactions

We quickly gathered our team around our desks to take an Oreo and try it. The reviews were even better than I expected. Most people hated the flavor and especially the pop rock candy. Although the cookie itself didn’t taste great, it was fun hearing the reactions.

The next week, Pablo brought in some more Oreos and gave them to Xak and me to pass them around again. Xak and I realized, this was becoming a thing! We needed to create an inventory system, a way to track who brought in Oreos, where they were from, and then also a way to capture everyone’s reviews. A Slack channel was promptly created for us to announce the next Oreo tasting, and also Oreo sightings in the grocery store. To join Oreo Club, the rules were simple: Bring Oreos for people to taste.

We started getting so many Oreos from our team that we had enough to do tastings every week. My filing cabinet was stuffed to the top with Oreos. Staplers, sticky notes, and notebooks had to find a new home. Every week, I announced tasting flavors and times and a mad rush would gather around Xak’s and my desk to taste the week’s Oreo, provide their rating and review, and then stick around to hear other’s reviews. It didn’t just stop at Oreo cookies either. People brought in Cakesters, Oreo-Os (the cereal), and Oreo flavored creamer! Our team was starting to get a little Oreobsessed.

Among some of the flavors were fairly normal options like Lemon, Mint, and Pistachio, however there were also Oreos that were meant to emulate existing desserts like Carrot Cake, Apple Pie, and Good Humor Strawberry Shortcake.

Xak and I discussed how it would be cool to compare how these kinds of Oreos stood up to the desserts they were trying to be: were they accurate or unrecognizable imitations?

Xak being Baker Xak (even in 2018) was more than happy to create the original baked desserts for special Oreo events and the club members were equally as delighted at the unexpected extra treats to enjoy. We decided to have seasonal events once a quarter.

After our first successful year of delicious and sometimes questionable Oreo Club tastings, the founding members (Xak, Pablo, and I) wanted to do something special for the other members. People had contributed White Chocolate Fudge covered Oreos, Winter (Red) Oreos, and Peppermint Bark Oreos which I had been housing in the vault. Since these all had a seasonal theme, the three us discussed what could go with that theme. We decided on Treat bags with Oreo flavored candy canes, Oreo hot chocolate, two types of Oreo ball truffles (Peppermint Bark and Regular), and an Oreo cake made by Pablo’s mom.

Soon, Oreo Club started becoming well known. Not just amongst my team, but within our entire local office and also within our whole company. I was even contacted for an interview to be featured in our company app! Any time a teammate would go overseas, they promised to look for special Oreos for us to try. To date, we’ve tried Oreos from the following countries:

• Portugal
• Iceland
• Serbia
• Japan
• Australia
• Korea
• Canada
• Costa Rica
• Chile
• Singapore
• United States
• China
• England

With Oreo Club, I’ve traveled all over the world without leaving my desk!

The Future of Oreo Club

It’s been six years since Oreo Club first started. From 2020-2023, Oreo Club had to go on hiatus. While members have come and gone, Pablo, Xak and I no longer sit in the same row, and even our office has completely changed, somehow Oreo Club has survived. In fact, not only has it survived, it’s still thriving and has even inspired some of our other offices in North America to create their own.

While we no longer have weekly tastings, Xak and I still try to have a tasting every few weeks. Our most recent tasting took place on National Oreo Day featuring the following:

• Space Dunk
• Dark and White Chocolate (Singapore)
• Strawberry Creme (Singapore)
• Bañadas (Portugal)
• Original (Japan)
• Wafer Rolls (Vietnam)

All of these Oreos were contributed by our members and I am so grateful for all the contributions over the years. I have met so many people through Oreo Club and sometimes I may not know their name, but I remember what Oreos they like.

Co-worker who I can’t remember their name, but did an Oreo tasting before: “Hi Dani”

Me: “Hi…. you really liked Pumpkin Spice Oreos.”

A scenario that may or may not have happened recently…

Through Oreo Club, I’ve started noticing trends among people and I’ve also started to successfully predict when people will like a certain flavor. What a useless superpower this is, right?

While it may sound stupid, what I’ve realized is that people like Oreo Club. It’s so simple, but a lot of fun. We’re just trying out cookies from around the world. However, if it brings even a small amount of joy to someone’s work day, I’m just really happy I can help contribute to that… even it if means dressing up as an Oreo 🤣