A Viral Podcast Claimed That Cheez-Its Taste Wildly Different Depending On Where They're Made, So I Went To The Factory To Get The Truth
After 6,000 miles and several emails to Cheez-It, the mystery has been solved (kind of).
Several months ago, a clip from the podcast The Consumers went viral after guest Andy Woodhull made the claim that Cheez-Its manufactured in Kansas City, Missouri, are better than Cheez-Its from other factories.
He claims that if a serial number on the bottom of the box starts with the letter K, that means that the Cheez-Its come from this superior KC facility. He suggests that whenever shopping for Cheez-Its, you should always check for that letter K; that’s how you know you have the good stuff.
The post caused quite a stir, with many people on the Internet confirming that they could taste a difference in boxes of Cheez-Its. Some even detailed arguments with family members about how one box tastes "off" and not like the Cheez-Its they know and love.
Seeing this, I thought it would be very simple to test. Just go to the grocery store and buy two boxes of Cheez-Its: one with a K serial number and one without a K. According to the Internet, the other Cheez-It factory is in Cary, North Carolina, and it claims to be the world’s primary producer of the cracker. So I was prepared to have a difficult time finding a box with a K serial number.
Like a madman, I spent 20 minutes at my local grocery store looking at the bottom of every single box and package of Cheez-Its on the shelves. Every single one of their serial numbers started with a K. A worker came up to me and asked me if I was alright. I ran away.
I went to other grocery stores and convenience stores in my area. It was K’s all the way down. How can this be? People on the Internet are absolutely certain about the differences in taste from box to box. I decided that the only way to really know if a Cheez-It came from Kansas City was to go to the actual factory. I piled myself and my dog Sassy into the car and drove to Kansas City.
I reached out to Cheez-It to see if they would allow me to take a tour of their Kansas City factory. Unfortunately, they could not accommodate a tour, but they did give me a whole load of free snacks for the trip, as well as a giant Cheez-It-shaped pool float. Both boxes of Cheez-Its and the float had the K serial number.
At every gas station stop along my journey, I would check the Cheez-Its. All of them were K’s. I thought that maybe because I was west of the Mississippi, the KC factory supplied that part of the country, and that I would find some non-K packages towards the east. I reached Kansas City and stood outside the factory, wondering what magic inside made these crackers so good.
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Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania — my search continued all the way to my ancestral homeland of Philadelphia. I still could not find a Cheez-It box that did not have a K serial number. My family begged me to stop this quixotic search; they could see the madness forming in my mind. I shrugged them off and set out on the road again, leaving them with Cheez-Its to remind them of me.
Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas — only K’s. By the time I got to New Mexico, I had given up hope. I was not going to find a box of Cheez-Its made in Cary, North Carolina. I returned to my home in Los Angeles a defeated man, having driven nearly 6,000 miles.
In the days following the trip, I was still disturbed. All these people on the Internet claim they can taste a difference between Cheez-Its. But if all Cheez-It packages have a K serial number, which, according to the viral podcast clip, means they are the best of the best, how is there a difference? In desperation, I emailed Cheez-It again.
Was it actually fun? Perhaps that was a little lie to get the answers I needed. Two days later, I received a response from Cheez-It.
My reality was shattered. I spent three weeks searching the bottoms of Cheez-It boxes, when the answer to all my questions was simply on the top. I went back to my local grocery store, where this entire search all began.
There they were, clear as day. A "K" and a "P." Standing in the aisle, I wept. The same worker from three weeks before approached me, asking if I was alright. I ran screaming from the store, hands filled with the two boxes of Cheez-Its.
Once home, I forced my roommate, Rekha, to do a taste test with me. Visually, the Cheez-Its look exactly the same. Can you guess which cracker is from where? Rekha and I tasted both with a palate cleanser in between them. Was the KC cracker a little tangier and cheesier? Was the NC cracker a little saltier? It was hard to say.
We did a blind taste test. I was able to guess which cracker was which, but Rekha was not. The results, ultimately, were inconclusive. I think if I did 100 blind taste tests, the results would be 50/50.
What is truth? Are we presented with information every day that we just accept as true? Does our collective unconsciousness create memories about the taste of Cheez-Its until it is manifested into the world as a reality? Clearly, this endeavor has led me to ponder some of life’s great questions. And I will have to keep living with the famous Operation Ivy lyric at the forefront of my mind: “All I know is that I don’t know nothing.”
But at least for now, this mystery about the K serial number on a Cheez-It box can be put to rest.
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