One customer has gone viral after her attempt to cook a Trader Joe’s croissant went badly wrong.
The customer, who goes by Demi (@demifromqueens) on TikTok, posted a video about her failed attempt that has received 4.6 million views and over 302,000 likes.
“Trader Joe’s, you tricked me! Look at this croissant,” she said, directing viewers to the chocolate croissant pictured on the Trader Joe’s box. “I woke up and thought, ‘Oh, I could make one of these for breakfast,’ and look at this.” She then showed viewers what the croissant actually looked like out of the box, which appeared flat, uncooked, and tinged gray.
The creator then revealed that she didn’t realize you were meant to leave the pastry overnight (or for nine hours) to rise properly before cooking. “Guess I can turn my oven off,” she sighed.
While Demi’s plight entertained viewers, they weren’t exactly forgiving of her mistake. “What if we read the directions,” one commenter asked. “That would be crazy.”
“Respectfully, I knew this for like ten years,” another added. “I’ve been eating those since high school.”
“Everyone who shops at Trader Joe’s knows the pain of learning about the croissant instructions,” a third remarked. “It’s a rite of passage.”
Still, others were more empathetic of Demi’s relatable struggle. “Everyone is being mean, but I didn’t know either!” a fourth commenter remarked. “I want my snack IMMEDIATELY. They should put something big on the front of the box.”
This isn’t the first time Trader Joe’s customers were baffled by the store’s products. One customer was horrified after the Trader Joe’s Shawarma Chicken Thighs she purchased had a butter-like texture, which she compared to “lab meat.”
Similarly, another customer went viral after she found live bugs in her Trader Joe’s rice. But the most concerning find was by a customer who found shards of glass in her Trader Joe’s tuna. So, all things considered, Demi got off pretty lightly with her raw pastry.
Update 9:57am CT, Nov. 16: In an Instagram direct message exchange with the Daily Dot, Demi explained that she only recently began shopping at Trader Joe’s and shared further details on her croissant experience.
“The majority of things I buy from them just need to be heated up in an oven or pan,” she said. “So I assumed they were already made and they just needed to heat up. But this is why you always read the box and never assume anything. I let it proof and then made them.”
After a long wait, Demi found that the croissants weren’t all they were cracked up to be.
“I think people overhyped them,” she said. “It wasn’t the best chocolate in my opinion, but they were still good. Nice and crispy and flakey. I made all of them at once and froze them to grab and go. I would buy them again, they’re a solid buy, but I don’t think they’re anything so spectacular like people make them out to be.”