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If you haven’t heard of Crumbl Cookies, you probably will soon. The brand’s growth has been remarkable and they’re blanketing the country with locations.
Dessert-inspired concepts are not unique, nor are cookie concepts. A few already at scale are:
Insomnia Cookies: ~250 locations; in business since 2003
Great American Cookies: 400+ locations; in business since 1977
Mrs. Fields: 130+ locations; in business since 1977
How did a company - led by founders with no background in baking or food science - break through the noise and grow to have more locations than these 3 competitors combined in just 5 years?
Crumbl has opened more stores in the last 9 months than Insomnia in the last 20 years
This week, we broke down the analytics behind the why, where, what, and how of Crumbl’s growth:
Why have they been able to stand out in a crowded industry?
How have they grown so fast?
What has been their expansion strategy?
Where can they grow next?
What makes Crumbl unique? How do they get customers to their stores?
The first answer is social media. From bright pink boxes to eye-catching cookie designs, the brand was built from the ground up to generate buzz on social media.
As a result, Crumbl has almost 7M TikTok followers and ~4M Instagram followers. These numbers are high, and they’re astronomical compared to competitors.
Social media plays a clear role in generating brand visibility and affinity.
Second is variety. The cookie menu changes every single week. Menu drops have become a regular feature on their social media profiles.
This drives business to stores through the perception of scarcity - if you don’t get a flavor this week, it might be gone next week.
Third is technology. As a brand built over the past couple years, there are no legacy systems to integrate or institutional inertia slowing them down.
They’ve built modern customer-facing technology for ordering and internal technology for timely data collection and operational planning.
Taken together, these three differentiators - social media optimized, a time bound reason to visit, and a modern tech stack - show that Crumbl has built a customer acquisition strategy tailored to today’s consumer, and done it better than competitors.
WHERE: CRUMBL’S PATH FROM 1 TO 860+ LOCATIONS
Starting with just a single location opened in 2017, Crumbl had 862 stores as June 2023. In 2022 alone, Crumbl opened the equivalent of a store per day and more than doubled its location count.
There are few signs of this growth slowing down - 87 and 85 locations were opened in the last two quarters respectively.
These stores are dispersed across the United States. Every state has at least one location with the highest store counts in:
California (127)
Texas (92)
Florida (63)
Areas with higher store count generally align with places that have a higher population, with some notable exceptions.
New York City, for example, is not on the list of top metros despite being the largest metro by population size in the US (more on them later).
Even though these are the largest markets today, growth didn’t start in large urban metros.
Early in their growth trajectory, Crumbl opened closer to their home base in Utah and nearby western states.
Among their first 100 stores opened, 21 were in Utah, more than any other state. Three of the other 4 top states bordered Utah.
Since the 100th location was opened, California, Texas, and Florida have consistently held the top three spots across each phase of growth.
Growth started in the West, moved into the largest states by population, then dispersed across the country until they built a presence in every state.
Crumbl locations are franchises, not company owned.
This is one way that they’ve been able to grow so fast - instead of having to front the capital themselves, they sell territories and find franchisees to open and operate the stores.
The average revenue at a Crumbl location is nearly $1.8M - 50% more than a typical Starbucks.
Franchising works by assigning territories. An operator signs on for the right to operate in a given area with certain size or other characteristics.
Let’s take a look at how this plays out in practice with an example market, Nashville, TN.
There are currently 12 stores in the Nashville metro.
Stores in denser areas - tagged with red buffers below - are between 4.75-5.75 miles apart while stores in less dense areas - tagged with blue buffers - are 7-13 miles from the next closest store.
In the radius surrounding these stores - half the distance to the next store - the population is between 20,000-140,000 depending on the location.
Locations with lower surrounding population tend to be either:
Near tourist or downtown areas that drive additional foot traffic
Near other amenity-rich places (college campuses, shopping centers, etc.)
All territories are not created equal and Crumbl is carving up these markets in a way that drives distinct value for each location.
It’s easy to assume that such rapid growth was led by a “put a store anywhere we can” mentality, but that hasn’t been the case.
Crumbl’s franchising strategy has been methodical and targeted.
WHAT’S NEXT: MORE GROWTH
The brand is an affordable luxury - cookies range from $4-$5, steep compared to baking at home but low enough to be an impulse purchase.
This relative affordability means it has a wider set of markets where it can successfully operate - almost anywhere with people (residents, visitors, tourists, shoppers, etc.).
This includes everywhere from dense metros to high-foot traffic suburban shopping centers to bustling college campuses, and the growth strategy to-date has been to cast a wide net into all these areas before building density within markets.
There is at least 1 location in 274 distinct metro areas but 85%+ have 4 or less locations. Many of these can support more - metros like:
San Jose, CA - 4 locations, 2M population
Birmingham, AL - 3 locations, 1.1M population
Memphis, TN - 3 locations, 1.3M population
The opportunity is not just in building up these midsize markets. There is still significant runway for growth in the largest urban markets.
As one example, Mesa, AZ (Population: 509,492) and New York City (Population: 8,467,513) have the same number of locations - 4.
These 4 NYC locations are all in Manhattan and there are none across the river in Brooklyn, Hoboken, or Jersey City.
This area must be high on their list for market potential.
All this to say - 862 locations doesn’t look like the end of the road. They’ve built fast, but this growth has been targeted.
I’d expect if I pull this data again at this time next year we’d see more density within current markets and less growth through new market expansion.
Crumbl isn’t special in the sense that they cracked a secret formula. The founders had no background in baking, food services, or food science.
Their differentiation comes from building a brand tailored for today - highly effective social media, technology-led, and creating scarcity to drive visits - in a category where no one else has brought that playbook.
They’ve executed this vision faster than almost any other food and beverage brand through building a differentiated value proposition, finding strong franchise partners, and developing a methodical expansion plan.
Right now, despite the rapid growth, I don’t see the biggest risk as oversaturating the market with locations. I see bigger risk in consumer fatigue.
Is it a fad or does it have legs for the long term? Is a cookie viable as a largely standalone product, or will they need to become a broader dessert brand?
These questions will be answered over time, but in the short-term, I expect we’ll see more rapid growth as franchises that are under agreement open and continue to keep the brand on the path of explosive growth.
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