Crumbl Cookies opened its first location in Logan, Utah in 2017. By 2022, it had surpassed 600 locations and was the fastest-growing cookie company in the United States. By 2023, it crossed 900 locations. The brand reportedly reached a $700 million valuation. The founders were two cousins, Sawyer Hemsley and Jason McGowan, one of whom had zero baking experience when they started. None of that is normal. Here is what they did differently.
The Rotating Menu: Engineering FOMO at Scale
Most food chains build their identity around consistency. You know exactly what you are getting at McDonald’s, Subway, or Chick-fil-A. That predictability is a feature, not a limitation. Crumbl looked at that model and inverted it.
Every week, Crumbl releases a new menu of six cookies. One is always the classic pink sugar cookie with almond frosting. The other five rotate, and they rotate fast. Flavors that appeared last month are gone. Favorites that customers loved may not return for months. The weekly reveal happens every Sunday night on social media, and it functions more like a product launch than a menu update.
This is deliberate FOMO architecture. FOMO architecture is the intentional design of product availability to create urgency: buy it now or miss it. The rotating menu turns every cookie into a limited-edition product. It turns every week into a reason to visit. It turns every customer into a potential content creator, because they want to document and share the new flavors before they disappear.
The psychological mechanism here is well-documented: scarcity increases perceived value. When something is available all the time, it is easy to defer. When it is only available this week, it creates urgency. Crumbl engineered that urgency into the structure of their business from the start.
By the Numbers
- Founded: 2017, Logan, Utah
- Locations at peak growth (2023): 900+
- Estimated valuation: approximately $700 million
- Growth from founding to 500 locations: approximately 4 years
- Weekly menu rotation: new flavors every Sunday, always 6 cookies total
- TikTok followers (Crumbl official): over 8 million at peak
- User-generated content: millions of unboxing videos across TikTok and Instagram
- Franchise fee: approximately $25,000, with total investment ranging $347,666 to $691,783 (per FDD disclosures)
- Pink box: trademarked, instantly recognizable brand asset
The Pink Box as a Brand Asset
The Crumbl box is pink. Not “kind of pink” or “pinkish.” Specifically, recognizably, unapologetically pink. It opens flat. It displays the cookies like a jewelry case. It was designed to be opened on camera.
This is not incidental. Crumbl understood early that their packaging was a marketing vehicle. Every unboxing is a free advertisement. Every flat-lay photo is organic reach. Every TikTok of someone opening a Crumbl box and reacting to this week’s flavors is user-generated content that Crumbl did not pay for, did not direct, and does not have to distribute. The customers do all of that on their own because the box makes it easy, photogenic, and shareable.
Packaging as media is the principle at work here: when packaging is designed to perform well on camera, customers turn it into content. This is different from traditional packaging design, which optimizes for shelf visibility or structural integrity. Crumbl optimized for the phone screen. YETI understood a similar principle with their coolers: the product itself becomes a social signal that customers want to display and share.
TikTok Without Buying TikTok
Crumbl did not buy their TikTok presence. Their customers built it. The unboxing format is native to TikTok: short, visual, reactive, shareable. Opening a box of six unusual cookies and rating them live is exactly the kind of content the platform rewards. Crumbl’s product was accidentally (or deliberately) perfectly matched to the format.
The weekly menu rotation amplifies this. New flavors every week means new content every week. Food creators who review Crumbl have fresh material on a predictable schedule. The Sunday reveal creates a weekly content cycle that generates anticipation, reaction, and review content across millions of accounts. That cycle runs continuously with no paid media involvement from Crumbl.
This is what earned media compounding looks like. Earned media is coverage or content you did not pay for. When earned media compounds, each piece of content drives visibility that generates more content. Crumbl’s rotation schedule is the engine. TikTok’s algorithm is the amplifier. The customers are the distribution network.
For comparison: Red Bull built its brand on events and content that customers wanted to watch. The mechanism is different, but the principle is the same: give people something worth sharing, and you do not need to buy media.
The Franchise Model: Speed Without Losing Quality (Mostly)
Crumbl franchised aggressively. The model allowed rapid expansion because each franchisee funds the build-out and operations. Crumbl provides the recipes, the systems, the training, and the brand. Franchisees provide the capital and the local execution.
This is a classic asset-light franchise model: the franchisor grows revenue through royalties and fees without owning the physical locations. The risk of each location sits with the franchisee. The brand risk, however, sits with the franchisor. If a franchisee delivers inconsistent product, it damages the brand that every other franchisee depends on.
Crumbl maintained quality through standardized recipes, required equipment, and centralized menu control. The weekly flavors come from Crumbl corporate. Franchisees do not choose their own menu. This keeps the product consistent and the content machine running: every location in every state is selling the same six cookies this week.
If you are exploring franchise opportunities or building a business that could eventually be franchised, getting your legal and business structure right early matters. LegalZoom and Northwest Registered Agent can help you establish the foundation before you scale.
The HL Hype Loop Framework
The HL Hype Loop (Hustler’s Library framework) maps how Crumbl’s system sustains itself:
- Weekly rotation creates urgency and a reason to visit
- Urgency drives in-store traffic and orders
- Pink box design turns every purchase into a content opportunity
- Content opportunity generates TikTok and Instagram posts by customers
- Customer content drives awareness among people who have never visited
- New awareness converts to new customers, often timed to next week’s menu reveal
- Menu reveal restarts the cycle
This loop runs every seven days, indefinitely. The brand’s job is to keep the rotation interesting enough to sustain it.
Key Takeaways
- Scarcity plus shareability is a compounding growth engine. When your product is limited in time and easy to share visually, customers do your marketing for you.
- Design your packaging for the phone screen, not the shelf. The pink box was a media vehicle before it was a cookie box.
- A weekly content cycle beats a monthly campaign. Crumbl generates fresh UGC every Sunday without paying for any of it.
- Franchising at speed requires centralized control of the product. Crumbl kept menu authority centralized so every location runs the same content machine.
- FOMO is a feature you can engineer into your product structure. Availability decisions are marketing decisions.
Sources & Further Reading
- Crumbl Cookies Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD), 2022-2023
- Forbes, “How Crumbl Cookies Became America’s Fastest-Growing Cookie Chain” (2022)
- Business Insider, coverage of Crumbl’s TikTok growth and franchise model
- QSR Magazine, Crumbl franchise growth data and unit economics
- TikTok Creator Marketplace data on #Crumbl hashtag performance
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