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Curated by: Michael Girdley (151 videos)
Special thanks to Mercury for partnering with me! Mercury gives founders powerful banking, cards, and financial tools built to help businesses operate smarter. Learn more and get started at http://mercury.com/ And if you’re struggling to find good talent, check out Near, my staffing company. https://www.girdley.com/near Crumbl Cookies went from a single Utah store to more than 1,000 locations in under seven years. In this business breakdown, I look at how Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley built one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains around social media, scarcity, franchising, and a constantly rotating menu—and what happened when that growth engine started working in reverse. Get the 2-minute cheat sheet for this video → https://girdley.com/youtube 👇 SUBSCRIBE for more business breakdowns https://www.youtube.com/@Michael-Girdley?sub_confirmation=1 ► Get my weekly letter to business owners: essential insights to run, grow, and stay ahead in your business → https://links.girdley.com/newsletter-yt ► For sponsorships or inquiries please reach out to: Contact@girdley.com ► Do you have a hat I should wear in a video? Send it to us: Contact@girdley.com ► Free events on all things small business: https://links.girdley.com/lectures-yt ► Deep dives on businesses for sale: https://www.youtube.com/@AcquisitionsAnonymousPodcast ► Follow me on Twitter/X: https://x.com/girdley Crumbl started in 2017 when cousins Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley approached cookies less like traditional bakers and more like a tech startup. They tested recipes, built a highly recognizable pink box for social sharing, and created a rotating weekly menu that gave customers a reason to come back—and a reason to post about what they bought. That model exploded during the pandemic. Crumbl’s takeout-friendly stores fit the moment, while weekly flavor drops helped create a powerful word-of-mouth and social media flywheel. By 2022, the chain had more than 400 stores, with the average location generating about $1.8 million in annual revenue. Eventually, though, the same novelty engine that drove Crumbl’s growth became harder to sustain. For franchisees, the economics were complicated by an 8% royalty, labor-intensive operations, changing recipes, rising costs, and the risk of stores cannibalizing each other as the network expanded. By 2025, typical store sales were down another 14% to roughly $1.14 million per location, according to the figures discussed in this video. In 2026, more than 20 stores closed in a single week. So what happened to Crumbl Cookies? This Crumbl Cookies documentary is ultimately a business breakdown of what happens when scarcity, virality, franchising, and rapid expansion collide. The same FOMO strategy that helped build the brand also required a constant stream of novelty, while franchisees still had to make the underlying store economics work. The broader lesson for operators is that rapid growth can hide weaknesses that only become obvious when conditions change. Crumbl built an enormous brand and still has customers who love its products, but its story shows the risks of extrapolating peak-era performance, oversaturating markets, and building a growth engine that depends heavily on keeping consumers excited about what comes next.