Over the course of 2024, FoodTok — a portmanteau of “food” and the social media app “TikTok” — truly became obsessed with cookies. Not just any kind of cookies, but large, buttery ones that come neatly packaged in a baby pink box.
Crumbl Cookies, branded simply as Crumbl, garnered international fame across social media and it’s not hard to see why. Much of the company’s allure is that it managed to transform a humble dessert into a saccharine spectacle. You won’t catch Crumbl serving up run-of-the-mill sugar cookies because “basic” isn’t in the company’s vernacular. A standard Crumbl cookie is approximately 4.25 inches in diameter and well-adorned with frostings and fun toppings. To add to the fun, Crumbl offers customers a rotating menu, which means its cookie flavors are always changing. Honey Cake with Teddy Grahams, Cornbread, Maple Bacon and Lemon Cheesecake are just a few of its most iconic flavors.
Crumbl was founded in 2017 by cousins-turned-business-partners Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley. What started as a side hustle has since grown into a billion-dollar enterprise. The cookie chain boasts more than 980 stores across the U.S. and as of April 2024, has grown its location count by 41%, Restaurant Business reported. It also sold more than 300 million cookies in 2022, per CNBC.
Crumbl Cookies may be a social media darling, but its meteoric rise — powered by a unique marketing strategy and eye-catching designs — belies a more complicated reality. While fans flock to its rotating menu of over-the-top flavors and influencers boost its cultural cachet, the cookie chain faces mounting criticisms over its product quality, declining profits, and even legal controversies. The question remains: Can Crumbl sustain its sugary spectacle in the long term?
At the time of Crumbl’s inception, McGowan worked in the tech industry, developing apps and websites for companies like Ancestry.com and i.TV. Hemsley was a college student at Utah State University where he studied communications with a minor in multimedia and marketing. Hemsley was also studying entrepreneurship, which got him thinking about opening a bakery in the rural community of Logan, Utah.
“I wanted Jason, my cousin, to partner with me on it, and he would mainly be the financial side of things, and I would be the operation side of things,” Hemsley explained to Salon. “I would always go around town looking for spaces to rent, and I would send him pictures, saying, ‘This is our shop…’ We really need to do this idea and this business, because I really felt like there was a need in the market for freshly baked cookies.”
The goal of Crumbl, Hemsley said, was to take away the stress and mess of baking. The business was also conceived at the height of food-delivery apps and services, namely DoorDash. Hemsley and McGowan initially planned for Crumbl to be a delivery-forward company that would bring customers fresh, Grandma-style cookies right to their doorstep.
The bakery proved to be successful, but not how Hemsley and McGowan envisioned.
A whopping number of sales — around 80% — were from in-store orders, while 20% were from online and delivery orders.
“People loved the experience that we created in store,” Hemsley said. “They were able to walk in and see us mixing the product — hand-balling the product, cracking the eggs. You name it — and actually [smell] freshly warm cookies. It was such an experience that people just loved coming back.”
Both Hemsley and McGowan are amateur bakers and they ran into several obstacles when learning to bake in a large, commercial setting. The duo looked for help on YouTube and consulted cookbooks, bakers and old family recipes when perfecting their earliest cookie flavor, which was chocolate chip.
“We felt like the chocolate chip was what everyone grew up with…it's the classic chocolate chip cookie that everybody knows and loves, and it's pretty well known across the nation,” Hemsley said, adding that he and McGowan even created a Twitter poll to figure out whether customers preferred semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips (spoiler: milk chocolate chips ended up winning).
Crumble later introduced its second flavor, Chilled Pink Sugar Cookie, which features a sugar cookie base and a bright pink-hued sweet almond icing. Then came Midnight Mint, the brand’s first chocolate-based cookie that includes midnight mint chocolate chips. Staying true to its name, the cookie was sold after midnight when Crumbl bakeries stayed open until 2 A.M., Hemsley said.
“A lot of trial and error, a lot of just kind of seeing what worked, what didn't, and listening to our customers is what transformed our menu into what it is today,” he added. Crumbl now features a weekly rotational menu with six different cookie flavors. For instance, the week of Dec. 30 to Jan. 4, Crumbl is serving Churro, Cookie Dough, Vanilla Crumb Cake, French Toast, Monster (featuring M&M's candies) and Milk Chocolate Chip cookies alongside Cookies & Cream Tres Leches Cake.
Hemsley said Crumbl thrived off of the “energy and excitement” it received from fans and new customers alike. Although the initial response to starting a bakery was ridicule (friends and family of both Hemsley and McGowan said the pair was “crazy” for wanting to pursue such a venture), Crumbl ultimately made it big and amassed fame across social media. In 2021, Crumbl hit 1.6 million followers on TikTok in just six weeks. Its cookies also became the subject of taste test videos and mukbangs. The format of these videos are eerily similar: the taste-tester or reviewer first displays their haul of cookies (oftentimes inside a car) before taking large, audible bites into their cookies. The whole showcase is extravagant and ostentatious, making the cookies look all the more mouth-watering.
In addition to being reviewed by influencers, the cookies themselves have attained influencer-level fame. TikTok influencers, like @Crazy4crumbl and @crazycrumblcousins, are just a few, popular Crumbl-focused accounts on the app. The former routinely posted weekly reviews of cookies and, in one instance, hosted a graduation party serving mega-sized boxes of Crumbl’s mini cookies.
@crazy4crumbl Graduation party ft. Crumbl ✨✨#crumbl #obsessed #crumblescookies #fyp #gradparty
♬ song is street by doja cat - Tom Holland gf (real)
Adding to its social media fame, Crumbl also enjoyed several high-profile partnerships with celebrities and major brands.
In August, Crumbl partnered with pop star Olivia Rodrigo to launch the GUTS Cookie, which was available for a limited time only at select Crumbl locations near Rodrigo’s concert tour stops. The cookie featured layers of triple-berry jam and light vanilla buttercream sandwiched in between two chilled, purple-hued, vanilla cookies and rolled in star-studded sprinkles.
Earlier this month, Crumbl also announced a rather unexpected partnership with Dove to release a line of desserts-scented body products. “Dove x Crumbl is here to satisfy the cravings of skincare lovers with a sweet tooth everywhere — delivering the delectable, viral flavors of Crumbl cookies paired with the superior care that Dove is known for,” an announcement from both brands read. The full collection — launched on National Cookie Day — features three scents: Confetti Cake, Lemon Glaze, and Strawberry Crumb Cake. Each scent is available as a liquid hand soap, deodorant, body wash and body scrub.
Despite the acclaim and rave reviews, Crumbl has also received criticism over its cookies’ taste. Becky Krystal, recipes editor at The Washington Post, described the cookies as “doughy and greasy.” Bon Appétit’s Sam Stone wrote: “The company has created cookies that photograph well, and that are highly anticipated. But, in the end, it’s quite widely acknowledged that the cookies are not amazing. Not even great — good is generous, and okay is a stretch!” In fact, the overwhelming consensus is that Crumbl is quite bad. It’s way too sugary and, in more instances than not, seems underbaked.
Y’all done overhyping Crumbl Cookies or…??
— Wholesome Rashad (@OptimusGrind__) April 8, 2023
Restaurant Business reported in April that Crumbl’s per-store profits were $122,955 in 2023, which was a 58% decline from the previous year. And despite the growing locations, Crumbl experienced a 37% decline in unit volumes year over year.
Crumbl also faced some legal controversies. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor found that 11 Crumbl locations violated child labor laws. TODAY reported that the franchises were fined nearly $60,000 for allowing 46 underage employees (some as young as 14) to work longer and later hours than the law permits and use dangerous machinery that they aren’t legally old enough to use.
“At Crumbl, we are committed to maintaining a safe and welcoming work environment for all of our franchisees and their employees. We take any violation of federal labor laws very seriously. We were deeply disappointed to learn that a small number of our franchised locations were found to be in violation of these laws,” the company said in a statement released at the time.
The following year, Crumbl sued rival cookie brands Dirty Dough Cookies and Crave Cookies, alleging that they copied Crumbl’s style of “packing, decor, and presentation.” Crumbl also alleged that “a Crumbl insider left Crumbl to found Dirty Dough, which sells and promotes cookies using packaging, décor and presentation that is confusingly similar to Crumbl’s established and successful trade dress and brand identity,” As for when that exactly happened, Crumbly claimed it was in late 2019.
Dirty Dough has denied the allegations, and its CEO Bennett Maxwell took to LinkedIn to make jabs at Crumbl. “A billion-dollar company suing 2 start-ups. Why? Because apparently you put sprinkles on your cookies, Crumbl thinks they own that,” he wrote, adding, “Watch out Grandma, you better throw away those sprinkles or you will be Crumbl’s next victim.” In court filings, McGowan said Dirty Dough “spent their time and resources making videos mocking and disparaging Crumbl and this lawsuit. Defendant’s cavalier approach must stop."
Even amid the hate and controversies, Crumbl is still pulling through. New cookie flavors are being rolled out by the week and consumers are eating them up — both literally and figuratively. Perhaps, Crumbl’s current success is a testament to the powers of social media rather than the brand’s baking prowess. But then again, taste is subjective.
