The days of froyo are over. Fancy cupcakes are outdated. The cronut craze now seems like a distant dream. Dessert trends change rapidly and today we have entered the era of elaborate cookies.
When crumble first debuted, the novelty was that the company had turned a relatively simple, low-effort dessert, served as an accompaniment to a food order, into a huge, flashy centerpiece. . A single crumble cookie can measure up to about 5 inches in diameter, and in the past has featured such unusual flavors as cornbread, churro, Biscoff mule, and maple bacon. It is a colorful and photogenic package that comes in a baby pink box that can be recognized at a glance even from a distance. Since 2017, the brand has grown rapidly, opening more than 1,000 stores and becoming perhaps the most accessible cookie chain in the country. But whether Crumbl is actually better depends a lot on who you ask. Its unanswered questions help fuel its continued popularity and relevance online.
Rather than attracting customers with a steady menu of guaranteed-to-be-loved cookies, Crumble sparks online popularity by offering a revolving door of new desserts each week. In addition to cookies, more and more people are also making pies, cakes, ice cream, pudding, etc. The brand’s official TikTok account has more than 9.6 million followers, but the real draw lies in the many influencers who regularly post about Crumbl on the platform. Their decadent structures, at times puzzlingly unwieldy in appearance, intrigue us to see what kind of sweet inventions they will accomplish this time. Open up TikTok on Monday to see fresh Crumbl review videos featuring countless creators getting excited about the new treat.
“This is an Internet brand,” says Steven Zagor, an adjunct business professor at Columbia University. Crumble is undertaking “all appropriate marketing activities” as a company. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
There’s no denying that Crumble has harnessed the power of social media to grab people’s precious attention and, so far, continues to hold it. The question is whether it’s sustainable to be a dessert chain whose sole purpose is to drive new trends and provide something temporary. For any content creator, staying fresh is a huge benefit. However, if you come here for dessert and find your favorite flavor, good luck. If it does come back, it may take months to get it back.
How Crumble grew, grew, and grew.
In the age of ghost kitchens, no other cookie chain has the physical presence that Crumble does today. Insomnia was launched in 2003 and currently only has about 300 stores. The same goes for Mrs. Fields in the United States. Levain, a high-end brand of baked goods, opened in the 90s, but is not franchised and only has a few locations scattered around the country. Newer competitors like Dirty Dough and Crave also have far fewer stores than Crumbl.
Crumble founders Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley are cousins from Utah. Before launching Crumble in 2017, they “knew nothing about baking,” McGowan said in an interview with CEO Magazine. Although they had backgrounds in technology and marketing, they thought they could give cookies a try. The company quickly began franchising new stores, opening hundreds of stores annually.
“There are very few brands that I’ve ever seen that are growing at this pace, especially in brick-and-mortar stores,” said Kathleen Gosser, a professor of franchise management practices at the University of Louisville. But unlike Subway, which famously adopted a strategy of opening too many stores, Gosser said Crumble appears to have been more strategic in spacing out its stores. “It’s not like there aren’t people on every corner,” Gosser said. In New York, for example, there’s still not one in Brooklyn or Queens. There’s one on Staten Island and several in Manhattan. There’s also one in the West Village, the birthplace of the dessert craze from cupcakes to cronuts, and that’s where I first tried it. Crumble cookie.
According to mobile app analytics firm Sensor Tower, the Crumbl app has been downloaded more than 6.4 million times in the U.S. this year, ranking it 15th overall in the U.S. food and beverage category, which is impressive for a chain that only sells desserts. (No. Coffee, because the founder is a Mormon).
People on the internet can’t stop talking about crumble.
Most brands today rely on social media for at least some of their marketing. What’s different about crumble is that it doesn’t become a trend, with influencers just bemoaning the product, especially when weird limited-edition flavors come out, like the recent Oreo and Coke collaboration. There are occasional celebrity endorsements and tie-ins, such as the release of Olivia Rodrigo-themed cookies in the summer, but most of the advertising is decidedly organic as well. Avid content creators explore weekly drops and use popular (and sometimes polarizing) desserts as a means to boost their own fame.
Thanks to a carousel of new flavors arriving regularly, Crumbl’s business model has a continuous hype machine built into it. This serves as fodder for seemingly never-ending discussion as there is a constantly updated feed of Crumbl content to consume. Some influencers dislike crumbles. Others can’t get enough. Taste tests often have titles like “My Honest Thoughts on Crumbles,” as if to suggest that they are filtering out all the noise to reach their final verdict on the cookie. . The fact that these flavors are only available for a week also almost guarantees a certain sense of urgency to the luxury streetwear drop. People online post “Crumble spoilers” (leaks about what flavors are coming in the coming weeks), but if you become a Gold Tier Rewards member of the loyalty program Get early access to videos.
The inherent shortage means that when a new menu item is released, “people have to run to get there,” Zagor said.
Online mentions of Crumbl have increased over the past year, up 29% compared to 2023, according to consumer insights firm Brandwatch. But the biggest moment of attention came a few months ago when news broke of Crumbl’s “pop-up.” Sydney, Australia went viral on social media. People lined up to pay 17.50 Australian dollars (approximately 12 US dollars) for a cookie. This is more than double the price in the US, where it turned out to be an unauthorized resale pop-up. For those posting about it online, the virality of the one-day event was the highlight, not so much the anticipation of how delicious the cookies, which had been imported days earlier (many People said this) regarding antiquity). Crumble has chosen not to take any legal action. In fact, the scandal has accelerated the brand’s plans to open its first store outside of North America in Australia.
Jason McGowan, CEO of Crumbl in Sydney, Australia, said: Dominic Lorimer/Sydney Morning Herald via Getty Images
Food marketing on social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram is especially appealing to young people because it’s interactive, said Jennifer Harris, senior research advisor for marketing at the University of California’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health. “I’m no longer just sitting around passively watching TV,” she tells Vox. “The weekly changing flavors are also very appealing to kids who can’t miss it. (It’s) the FOMO factor.”
Can Crumble continue to provide excitement?
It’s hard to imagine that crumble seekers don’t know that these giant desserts are probably not healthy (a single cookie can contain over 900 calories), but when it comes to digital content about a brand, the dessert’s literal The key is to understand and stay on top of consumer trends, whether it’s cookies or skin care products. In a recent video, YouTuber Edovasian likened the Crumbl phenomenon to: Cookie “fast fashion” is another manifestation of hyper-consumption fueled by a conveyor belt of micro-trends that come and go at a constant pace, and brands need content creators to market them. A starting point for developing your audience Behind every new week of Crumble is the potential for viral fame.
This relationship between fast fashion and influencers isn’t new, but the juxtaposition is a little strange when we’re talking about food, especially the kind of food that is often a luxurious, nostalgic comfort. Desserts are a difficult area for companies to succeed. “We’re constantly being compared to grandma’s cookies or cookies from the local bakery,” Zagor says. Crumble offers adventure, but it doesn’t offer familiarity, and it doesn’t necessarily offer loyalty.
Despite Crumbl’s rapid success, there are some worrying signs in its recent performance. Profits per store in 2023 plummeted by approximately 58% compared to the previous year. This casts doubt on whether it can maintain its popularity, or whether the indulgent cookie trend could move in the direction of fro-yo. Some customers complain about the price of one cookie and its quality. Cookie quality may vary by week and store. (A cookie is $4.99 at my local Crumble, $5.77 at Levain, and most Insomnia cookies are $2.95.) The company is also a cookie chain known for offering a weekly menu of inventive flavors. He is also very active in defending his position. In 2022, the company sued two much smaller competitors, Crave Cookies and Dirty Dough, which also offer new flavors every week, for allegedly copying its strategy, trademarks and packaging, and Dirty Dough sued Crave Cookies and Dirty Dough, which also offer new flavors every week. He claimed to have plagiarized many of his recipes. Crumble subsequently agreed to resolve both lawsuits by settlement.
The challenge is to maintain that momentum. “In a world where everything is virtual and everything goes out in a flash, it’s very easy for someone else to come along and steal the spotlight,” Zagor says.
My personal experience with crumble is that the dessert tastes very good. Although not inedible, the small pecan pie was delicious. But none of them are memorable, nor are they what I crave or reach for when I’m craving something sweet. “There’s just as much air as there is matter,” Zagor explains. “It’s what you see, what you hear, what you read, and the color of the box.” In the face of so much other fluff, the actual flavor of the thing can’t help but recede into the background.
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