Whole Foods tried to change this cake recipe. Customers lost it.

By Kasia Pilat and Alexa Weibel, The New York Times

When Lisa Younes visited her local Whole Foods Market in Berkeley, California, last month she expected to walk out with a slice of her beloved Berry Chantilly cake: With its lofty layers of almond-scented cake and fluffy mascarpone frosting dotted with fresh mixed berries, it had become her go-to sweet treat for the past year.

But there were none available. “I just received the worst news in my entire life,” Younes declared in a TikTok posted Sept. 21 from the store’s parking lot. “Whole Foods is discontinuing the Berry Chantilly cake that we all know and love.” She uploaded her reaction — and it quickly drew more than 1.5 million views.

For more than a week, speculation, misinformation and outrage swirled online: Had Whole Foods, owned by Amazon since 2017, eliminated the fresh berries entirely? Would individual slices exist no more? How could the company touch — let alone discontinue, as many surmised — its wildly popular cake, a staple at weddings, birthdays and family celebrations, a cake so renowned it had been trademarked? Chaos reigned on social media, in the news and in the minds of Chantilly cake fanatics.

One theory was that Whole Foods had not discontinued the cake, but changed the recipe to cut costs: “Whole Foods’ Chantilly cake is a victim of shrinkflation,” said Zarinah Williams in a TikTok video. Where there had once been fresh berries in the layers of cream, she observed, only a thin strip of cream and an unfamiliar red jam stood in their place. What was once a slice of cake that occupied most of its clear, hinged takeout container had seemingly dwindled to half its size, with loose berries rattling around in the remaining space.

In an email statement to The New York Times on Sept. 26, Nathan Cimbala, a Whole Foods Market spokesperson, said the company had “aligned the flavor profile, size, packaging and price” to standardize the cake slices sold in stores. The reasoning, according to the statement, was that customers would “have the same high-quality experience” no matter which store their cake slices came from.

Whole Foods’ cult cake dates back to 2002, when Chaya Conrad, then the bakery team leader of a Whole Foods in New Orleans, created the Berry Chantilly cake. Inspired by a cream cheese frosting her grandmother would make, Conrad layered a delicate yellow cake with berries and whipped up a cream frosting enriched with mascarpone and cream cheese.

Years before it would go viral on social media, the cake — tall, towering and studded with fresh berries — “was an immediate success; from Day 1 it turned into something,” Conrad said. Over the next 22 years, the cake, available whole, as a cupcake or by the slice, made its way into family traditions and customers’ hearts.

Conrad said she could see why Whole Foods might want to streamline the cake’s production process. “You have a lot of berries that are very seasonal, the price fluctuates a lot, the availability fluctuates a lot,” she said. “It is globalization at its finest — raspberries, blueberries, blackberries shipped in from wherever. As a businessperson I understand why on a large level they want to make things more consistent.”

In the end, however, the Berry Chantilly cake was untouchable — and Whole Foods reversed any plans to alter it: “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,” Cimbala said in an email Monday.

Chantilly cake fans who want a taste of the cake as it has been perfected by its creator over the last two decades can always buy one from Conrad’s Bywater Bakery, which opened in New Orleans in 2017.