UPDATE: The final nail in the former Crumbl business model was the complete flop of the Freakier Friday Blackberry Key Lime cake. This was a partnership with Disney and was one of the worst selling dessert Crumbl has ever had. After that terrible week, Crumbl HQ decided on the following changes:
- 1 Dessert Per Week Begins Aug. 24 – Crumbl will generally only offer 1 dessert per week. There may be exceptions due to partnerships, etc.
- Milk Chocolate Chip Weekly Staple – Milk Chocolate Chip will stay on the menu every week instead of alternating with Semi Sweet Chunk. This change will take effect August 18, 2025
- Removal of Mini Desserts – Mini Cookies are going to stay, but mini desserts are being discontinued! This will take effect September 1st, 2025.
- New offering: Chocolate Chip Box at 9.99 (doesn’t specify how many you’re getting yet) This will be available starting August 25th
- Dubai Brownie will run for 2 weeks with a 2.99 up charge.
Heading into August 2025, Crumbl search traffic has tumbled to yearly lows. While November and December used to be the slow months, the end of July has been some of the slowest sales days in the last two years. In fact, the last week of July in 2024 was the highest search volume week of the year. The last week of July in 2025 was the lowest search volume week of the year. Crazy.
Upon the return from the Crumbl Owners Conference in late July 2025, Crumbl Crew members were introduced to the new “Game Plan” that corporate is attempting to help forecast sales of cookies and desserts to reduce waste. This tells you everything you need to know about where Crumbl is as a company. In 2021 and 2022, they were willing to throw away hundreds of cookies a day because they were selling several thousand. This is no longer the case as many stores are reporting they cannot even produce a profit in August 2025.
The Freakier Friday partnership in early August 2025 along with some cult classics could bring in new customers, but most Crumbl Cookies locations are way down in sales and traffic. Only the Kardashian week and the Benson Boone Moonbeam Ice Cream Cookie week really saw year over year sales increased. Most other weeks have been down.
While the Limited Time Offer (LTO) desserts and mini cookies did create new interest in Crumbl during the summer of 2024, we are seeing another decline in sales during the summer of 2025. They have pushed celebrity partnerships, such as the Moonbeam Ice Cream cookie, and other ways to drum up social media interest, but sales continue to decline into June and July 2025. Crumbl really needs to hope their Dubai Chocolate takes off or it could be a very long second half of 2025 for Crumbl franchise owners. The only weeks of increased sales are during major partnerships/collabs or the 6 for 4 deal.
Now that Crumbl Cookies is coming off their best year ever, it will be interesting to see if the customer behavior to try out new cookie flavors and desserts every Monday continues. If Crumbl Cookies locations nationwide do not see a bump in interest on Mondays after the “New Years resolution” craze drops off, it could be another summer like 2023 which you can read about below. <—They did not.
Original Article
At one time, Crumbl Cookies was the darling millennial restaurant/dessert brand. Their TikTok videos received over 8000 comments and tens of millions of views in mid 2021. That has changed drastically by the end of 2023 and early 2024. In an article we published over the summer of 2023, we documented the significant decline in Google search traffic for Crumbl related keywords starting in the spring of 2023. The decline likely started at the end of 2022 at a time in which Crumbl Corporate was bragging about opening a brand new store every day. In reality, they opened over 360 stores in the year and it was the beginning of the end of the Crumbl Cookies brand.
Timeline:
June 2018
The first rotating menu started at Crumbl with
November 2020
Crumbl started a significant expansion with their franchise opportunities. Major metropolitan areas such as Indianapolis, Raleigh-Durham and Tampa started to see their first locations pop up.
April 2021
The TikTok craze begins. Stores that were selling around 10,000 cookies a month in the fall of 2020 started to sell over 50,000/month beginning in April 2021. All because of the TikTok phenomenon. Crumbl was known as the TikTok cookie.
Summer 2021
Popular Crumbl cookie locations throughout the United States had grand openings in which they were selling over 15,000-20,000 cookies in a three day period. In their first month, some Crumbl locations were selling in excess of 100,000 cookies. Demand far outpaced supply.
December 2021
Crumbl had 330 locations at the end of 2021 with hopes to expand to over 1000 locations within three (3) years.
Spring 2022
Crumbl franchises were in as much demand as Crumbl cookies as dozens of new stores were opening every single weekend. Some metropolitan areas started to see over 10 locations in a city. From May 5th through May 7th, 2022, Crumbl showed the first signs of straining suppliers with Mango Frozen Yogurt being unavailable, hence the creation of the Mystery Cookie. By July 2022, the Mystery cookie was a mainstay on the rotating menu with a once a month appearance. At the time, there were 439 locations.
Summer 2022
Crumbl Cookies sales remained high as the demand continued to outpace supply. Popular store locations were selling in excess of 75,000 cookies a month. New store openings, in areas in which there was not a Crumbl within two (2) hours, had lines backed up for hours. Stores were garnering 2500+ Google reviews in a few short months. TikTok Crumbl flavor announcement videos were receiving over 8500 comments.
Fall 2022
The first signs of saturation started to show as new store openings were not nearly as popular as in the earlier part of 2022. The required number of cookies sold during a Grand Opening were often not being met forcing franchise owners to offer a Free Cookie Day on the subsequent Friday.
Winter 2022
Saturated markets were seeing less and less cookie sales per store. If a Crumbl Cookies store was established within 15-20 miles of a store opening, there was little fervor and basically no lines during the entire grand opening weekend. Many stores opened and lost a significant amount of money during their Grand Opening weekend. More signs of suppliers being constrained start to appear as ingredients must be substituted for some cookies.
Spring 2023
While Valentine’s Day was a success for most stores, Mother’s Day saw a significant decline in sales. Many employees of Crumbl stated that in 2021 and 2022 Mother’s Day was a higher sales volume day than Valentine’s Day. That was absolutely not the case in the Spring of 2023 as supply was greatly outpacing demand in saturated markets. To make money during a Grand Opening weekend, it had to be in a location in which there was not a Crumbl within at least one (1) hours drive.
Summer 2023
In past summers, Crumbl Cookies was the go to summer treat. Not so in the summer of 2023. Google Trends charts show just how much the Crumbl Cookies brand lost in interest. During this time, many Crumbl Cookies locations went up for sale as the savvy franchise partners and business owners correctly predicted the fad was over. With supply constraints, many popular cookie recipes are changed. Diehard Crumbl fans are not happy about this as they call it “nuking” the recipe.
Fall 2023
Crumbl Corporate recognized sales were a huge problem and offered a 6 for the price of 4 deal on Wednesday, September 27th, 2023. Ironically, the actual 6th birthday for Crumbl was Friday, September 29th, but they wanted to run the special mid week. This was a blast from the past as Crumbl employees expressed just how busy the stores were. Unfortunately, stores were selling four (4) cookies for the price of six (6) so the profits were not nearly what they were during past high volume days.
TikTok Crumbl flavor announcement videos were receiving less 1500 comments (down from 8500 comments in the summer of 2022).
Winter 2023
After the September 27th promotion of 6 for the price of 4, sales started to plummet at basically every Crumbl throughout the United States. Google Search Trends show a very ugly picture for owners of a Crumbl Cookies franchise. Many stores went from having over 70 employees to less than 10. In May 2023 it was reported that Crumbl Cookies locations were cutting hours for employees. By the winter, most of those employees had been let go.
On November 28th, 2023 Crumbl Cookies announced they were going through a brand refresh in which they were dropping the “Cookies” part of Crumbl Cookies and were going to be just “Crumbl”. This came shortly after they started testing Cinnamon Squares for a breakfast offering and Savory Hand Pies (from Crust Club, which they bought).
This comes at a time when franchise partners are strained for cash as some have predicted 50% of stores are losing money and 300-400 could close in the next 12-24 months.
The first reports of Crumbl Cookies locations closing came in December 2023. You can find an updated list of Crumbl Stores closed here.
Response
Crumbl Corporate and Crumbl franchise partners are, for the first time, starting to feel the pressures of owning a business in which “open and they will come” is not how it is works. This is what Crumbl has done in the later part of 2023:
- Rebranded by removing “cookies” from the brand name
- Increased social and search ad spend at the slowest time of the year for Crumbl sales
- Over doubled the price of catering cookies during the holiday season
- Added the same exact cookie graphic to every Crumbl Google Business Profile
- Started testing Cinnamon Squares and Savory Hand Pies
- Continued to push new store openings
- Changed recipes to be more cost effective, yet did not reduce cost to consumers
Winter 2024
After rebranding to simply Crumbl, the once cookie chain became a dessert chain. During the week of January 22-27, 2024 Crumbl ran their first non cookie dessert which was the Cinnamon Square. The original intent was to increase sales in the mornings with a morning dessert, but the non cookie dessert hit customers right in the sweet spot and sales sky rocketed with Non Cookie Dessert offerings like cakes, brownies and cheesecakes.
Spring/April 2024
On April 21st, 2024 Crumbl started offering mini versions of their cookies on Monday only. This completely changed the behavior of the customer as it gave them even more of a sense of urgency to get into the Crumbl Cookies locations on Monday to try out the Mini Cookies. It was such an overwhelming success that it completely changed their business.
After the Mini Mondays success, Crumbl started rolling out more and more Limited Time Offer (LTO) desserts which were also a success. Some of the most popular were Trifle Berry Cake Cups, Tres Leches Cake and Cinnamon Squares. Some of these limited time offer cakes and desserts were also partnerships with major influencers or brands such as Olivia Rodrigo and the Beetlejuice movie.
Fall 2024
Crumbl sales continue to grow and peaked with the 6 for 4 deal on Wednesday, September 25th, 2024 for the “birthday anniversary” deal. This was the high water mark for Crumbl. Since the birthday special sales have plummeted into the winer of 2024/2025. The newness of the non cookie desserts wore off and the overall sales numbers at Crumbl locations started to nosedive in November 2024.
Spring/Summer 2025
The Kardashian/Jenner partnership week fooled many into believing that the uptick in sales started in April. It was the biggest sales week of the year for many stores but it was also the top. After the Kardashian/Jenner partnership week, Crumbl locations have had an abysmal Spring and Summer. The Benson Boone Moonbeam Ice Cream cookie sold well, but other than that, it has been down week after down week for Crumbl.
Sales have been so bad that after the 2025 Crumbl Franchise Owner Conference they made sweeping changes to the menu and overall business model that include:
- 1 Dessert Per Week Begins Aug. 24 – Crumbl will generally only offer 1 dessert per week. There may be exceptions due to partnerships, etc.
- Milk Chocolate Chip Weekly Staple – Milk Chocolate Chip will stay on the menu every week instead of alternating with Semi Sweet Chunk. This change will take effect August 18, 2025
- Removal of Mini Desserts – Mini Cookies are going to stay, but mini desserts are being discontinued! This will take effect September 1st, 2025.
- New offering: Chocolate Chip Box at 9.99 (doesn’t specify how many you’re getting yet) This will be available starting August 25th
- Dubai Brownie will run for 2 weeks with a 2.99 up charge.