Crumbl Co-Founder talks turning side hustle into $1 billion cookie business

It is time for Make It Mondays and tonight’s installment is a very sweet made it. We meet Jason McGowan. He started Crumble Cookies with his cousin as a side hustle. Now Cookie chain brings in a billion dollars a year with stores all across America. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that we would do over a billion dollars in sales. My name is Jason McGowan. I’m the Co founder and CEO of a cookie company called Crumble. Before Crumble it was all about technology. I loved building things that were digital. I thought my whole career I’ve been trying to bring people together. Is it possible that the solution is actually not a digital technology, but is it cookies? My business partner, Sawyer and I, we just thought it was a fun side hustle. We would kind of get together late at night and whatever time we could, we just keep making these cookies and then taste testing them and we came up with what we believe is the world’s best chocolate chip cookie. So we launched our whole business with one product and one flavor which was a chocolate chip cookie and it was a raging success right out of the gate. Early on in Crumble we decided to self fund it. I invested 68,000 into the business to seek capital to get us started and going. Everything else from that has been self funded from the success of the business. The franchising was really born out of a need to give a family member one of our locations. And then as friends and family stores started opening and we started seeing more and more success, that’s when we realized, oh wow, this could not be just a Utah thing or a family thing. This could be a really big business. And at that moment we said we’re going to go all in. We came up with the idea of what if we just rotate the flavors, let’s just drop them right. On a Sunday where people can’t get them, they’ll be super excited to be talking about what flavors they want and it allows us to continue to build and grow. And that’s how the rotating menu was born and that just changed everything in our business. We’ve created this full map that they can go on the on the app and then find out which cookies are are serving at what different locations. We’re Crumble trying the trace liches just right amount of pumpkin just right amount of frosting. We were heavy in social media right from the beginning watching TikTok and all these videos and really leaning into it and highlighting those people that were tasting our cookies and sharing their reviews and as we did that it just exploded. You know I never would have imagined that Crumble would be a Unicron company. In 2022 we had our first year of billion dollar yearly system wide sales and we have to pinch ourselves. I think action in the the early stage is what’s really, really important to success. Just to move, I hope that people look back at Crumble and say this is a company allowed us to create meaningful moments with those who matter most and Jason McGowan of Crumble joins us now and I’ve Jason, I got one of your cookies here and I went with to your point the original chocolate chip and I don’t know if you’re some kind of evil cookie genius or what but why? I mean why are they so good? How’s that for a hard hitting question? Thanks for the hard hitting question. Well, you know one of the things that we did Brian, when we first got started was we taste tested our way to the perfect chocolate chip cookie. So instead of having a family recipe or something else, we thought, what if we just went and said what is the best cookie that customers could try? And so we kind of edited our way to the cookie that you’re trying right now. And that’s what we believe is the world’s best chocolate chip cookie. I didn’t mean that more seriously. I’ve got a mouthful of cookie. You caught me here mid chew, which is what were others missing? Like this is not exactly an unsaturated market. I mean, there’s plenty of cookies everywhere. This is a hard business. You succeeded. What was the secret sauce, I guess? Well, I think there’s a lot of things, you know, whether it’s a chocolate chip cookie or others. But first and foremost, our cookies are made fresh with fresh ingredients in the stores. So other concepts you go and they make cookies earlier on the day or or days before. But with ours, you can watch them made in the oven. You can watch them, you know, spilling flour and doing it just kind of like you had it at home. You know, one of the things that we thought when we were brainstorming what makes the perfect chocolate chip cookie sewing are always reminded by like just the cookies that came out of our mom’s ovens, right? They’re warm and they’re fresh. And so, you know, when people started coming to crumble, they can see them made fresh. And then when they tasted them and they were warm, it made a big difference. I think the last thing is they’re really shareable. They’re huge, which makes them crunchy on the outside and soft and gooey on the inside. And so all those things combined just has has been made it really, really good for our customers. And my parents are appalled because I was just like talking with my mouth full there. What’s next for Crumble? I mean if you’ve you’ve done amazing, a billion bucks in sales in cookies, if you want to expand into other things, other sweets, other food price that that’s hard. It’s a hard, it’s a big market, it is a big market. It is really hard. But we have amazing bakers. And So what we think is, you know, cookies was a big part of what we’ve done over the last five and six years. But we feel like there’s a lot of opportunities to not only just try to conquer the cookie market, but lots of other dessert markets. You know, we spent in our mission was to bring friends and family together over the best cookies in the world and we’re going to change out that word cookies for desserts because we’re going after after all kinds of desserts and really to have that fun experience every week for our customers to come in and try something new and different. So we’re very, very excited. We launched Tres Leches Cake. We’ve launched the Simmons Square and it’s been amazing. Our customers have had huge response with that and apparently have a cookie, I think with cookie dough on the cookie, which is insane. Jason McGowan of Crumble Cookies appreciate it.