How Crumbl cookies scaled to 1,000 stores in eight years

Executive overview

Jason McGowan and cousin Sawyer Hemsley launched Crumbl in 2017 as a side hustle in Logan, Utah, with no baking experience. They applied tech-industry thinking — A/B testing recipes, building delivery routing software, and obsessing over virality — to a single chocolate chip cookie. The franchise model, self-funded throughout, reached 300 locations in four years and a billion dollars in revenue by end of 2022.

Treating a cookie shop like a tech startup — A/B testing, data, and social media — is what separated Crumbl from every other gourmet cookie brand.

From tech career to cookie shop

• McGowan left formal school in eighth grade; taught himself web design after a mission in Las Vegas
• Built BYU.com social network, shut down after cease-and-desist; joined Paul Allen (Ancestry.com founder) to build FamilyLink, reaching 120M users
• Sold Pic.com (social shopping, similar to Pinterest) before launch; learned that first-mover execution matters more than the idea
• Returned to Provo; worked as director of product at Ancestry while searching for something of his own
• Sawyer Hemsley — his wife's cousin — approached him wanting to start a business; a failed clothing brand cemented McGowan's trust in Sawyer's character

Building the product with A/B testing

• Neither founder had baking experience; started from zero in Sawyer's mother's home kitchen
• Changed one ingredient at a time, then asked strangers at a gas station to pick the better cookie
• Used a Twitter poll to decide milk vs. semi-sweet chocolate chips; 70% voted milk — decision made
• Discovered that home ovens and commercial equipment produce entirely different results; had to restart testing after buying commercial gear
• Signed a short-term lease on a soon-to-be-demolished building in Logan — kept costs low, preserved the option to fail cheaply

Launch and early growth

• Opened with one flavor: chocolate chip. No time for more before the building's demolition date
• A competitor launched one week earlier from home delivery; McGowan's response: ignore the competition, focus entirely on the customer
• Lines out the door on opening day; social media build-up (sharing store build-out photos) drove awareness before launch
• Pink packaging chosen because women — not college students — were the primary customers; color pulled from a memory of a pink Cadillac
• Second location was a commissary warehouse in Orem, delivering to all of Utah County — a logistics experiment that strained capacity but proved the model could extend beyond one city

Franchising without outside capital

• Franchised first because Sawyer's mother was set to be a co-owner, then backed out; her husband asked for a way back in, prompting the franchise structure
• Used franchise fees (not venture capital) to fund build-outs; business was self-sustaining before franchising began
• Opened the first 100 locations with McGowan personally doing real estate site selection
• Recipe consistency enforced via required photo submissions from each store; team reviewed images and flagged execution errors
• Friends and family formed the first franchisee group; allowed for patient, iterative quality control

Rotating menu as a growth engine

• Rotating weekly menu born after Bountiful: 11 flavors couldn't be kept in stock simultaneously, creating frustration
• Sunday flavor drop creates FOMO — customers who miss a favorite buy in bulk and freeze cookies
• Deliberately odd flavors (Everything But The Bagel, cornbread, strawberry limeade with Nerds) generate earned media even when sales disappoint
• Chocolate chip is the only permanent item; everything else turns over every week
• Franchise partners occasionally frustrated by low-selling weeks; a franchisee council now co-selects flavors

Social media and TikTok strategy

• Joined TikTok early — first-mover advantage over larger QSR brands
• Tailored content per platform rather than cross-posting the same video everywhere
• Championed customer reviewers: played their TikTok videos on in-store screens, reposted them, engaged directly
• McGowan posted his own negative review of a cookie he disliked — authenticity drove engagement
• Over 30 full-time staff dedicated solely to responding to customers on social media
• More TikTok followers than Starbucks and Domino's combined

Scale, competition, and staying relevant

• Kept Sunday closures despite a prospective Colorado franchisee threatening to walk; McGowan and Sawyer decided the cultural value outweighed the revenue
• Filed lawsuits against competitors who poached employees and took trade secrets; in hindsight McGowan sees it as a distraction from the core focus
• Reached $1B in revenue by end of 2022 — five years after launch, no outside investors until a recent minority stake
• Slowed from 200-300 new units per year to roughly 100; now more selective on location and placement
• Expanding beyond cookies: pies at Thanksgiving replaced what had been the slowest week of the year; cakes also added
• McGowan attributes success to three factors: tenacity, timing and luck, and faith