Crumbl, The Cookie That Broke the Internet

It’s a crisp Monday morning in Provo, Utah, and inside a nondescript corporate office park, two cheerful Crumbl employees usher a visitor into a surprisingly whimsical world. There are no conveyor belts or chocolate rivers, but the vibe is more than a little Wonka-esque: Giant prop cookies line the hallways, a butter stick the size of a park bench leans against a mixing bowl large enough to bathe in, and a cluster of dessert chefs hustle like Keebler elves inside a glass-walled test kitchen. This is Crumbl HQ — the epicenter of a pink-boxed cookie empire that since 2017 has grown from a single storefront in Logan, Utah, to a $2 billion franchise phenomenon spanning the U.S. and Canada. Fueled by TikTok virality, influencer loyalty and a weekly rotating menu that inspires both cravings and debate, Crumbl’s growth trajectory has been unsurpassed in the food industry space, expanding to 1,100 franchises in seven years, faster than it took both McDonald’s (13 years) or Starbucks (10).

Its cookie drops — which occur on Monday mornings across the country — have become as hotly anticipated as new iPhone launches or Sabrina Carpenter’s latest surprise single. What began as a local bakeshop concept has morphed into something closer to a dessert-based entertainment behemoth, complete with its own fan base, A-list Hollywood collaborations and even a juicy controversy that unfolded across TikTok and Instagram and rocked the Gen Z gossip-verse.

Everything — from the app that pings the cookie drops to the branding strategy that weaponizes nostalgia and novelty — emanates from this Provo facility. It’s where the cookie flavors are dreamed up, where rows of copywriters craft indulgent descriptions and where Crumbl’s founders, Sawyer Hemsley and Jason McGowan, two Mormon cousins united by faith and sugar, oversee the operations of this high-calorie symbol of American soft power.

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The idea began, as so many startups do, in a college town. Hemsley was a student at Utah State University in Logan when he and McGowan, his cousin by marriage, opened a storefront cookie shop with a singular twist: one flavor only. It was a warm milk chocolate chip cookie, and for a while, that was the entire menu.

The duo divided duties according to their strengths. Hemsley, 33, the more extroverted of the pair, became the public-facing creative force behind recipes, packaging and design. McGowan, 45, more technically minded, focused on scaling operations, overseeing the weekly cookie rollouts, reeling in franchises and cooking up the proprietary technology that would eventually make the whole operation hum.

“The tech is the only way we’re able to uphold the rotational menu,” explains menu vp Amy Eldredge during a headquarters tour. “We create instructional designs and feed those to our franchises, where they re-create them from scratch.”

Almost immediately, the business took off. What began as one cookie became four, then six, then a whole range, served both warm and cold, in an ever-expanding network of franchises, all minting cookies from the master recipes whipped up here in Provo.

The rotating weekly lineup, combined with social media hype and sleek branding, created a cookie version of appointment television: You had to show up each week or miss your chance.

That all of this began in Utah may not be entirely coincidental. For one thing, the state has become something of a hotbed of entrepreneurism, thanks to lower costs, a young, highly motivated labor force and local government regulatory initiatives aimed at making Utah “The Startup State.” For another, there’s the well-known Mormon affection for sugary snacks and “dirty sodas” — concoctions of Coke, flavored cream and other fruit purees available at Swig, a Utah-based drive-thru chain with 141 locations — popularized on such shows as Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. The religion has a long list of restrictions, from alcohol, cigarettes and drugs to premarital sex and even “hot drinks,” i.e. coffee and tea (neither of which is available at Crumbl locations). But sugar is OK and has become a staple of the Utah diet.

“There’s a sublimation of desire that goes into these cookies that I find really fascinating,” says Soleil Ho, the San Francisco Chronicle‘s James Beard Award-winning restaurant critic. “And it’s something I have experienced with friends who are sober. Instead of drinking or doing drugs, you smoke a lot of cigarettes or eat a lot of gummy worms. You have to channel that addictive tendency — and you get something out of sugar. Especially a lot of sugar.”

Speaking alongside Hemsley from his corner office, McGowan calls it a “fallacy” that their company caters specifically to the Mormon diet. “Do people other than Mormons like sugar?” he offers rhetorically. “Yes. And a lot of our sales are actually bigger outside of Utah. Those New Yorkers love sugar. So do other parts of the country. People all across the country love sugar. They love it all across the world.”

Much of Crumbl’s dizzying success can be credited not just to the planet’s unifying love of glucose, but to a remarkably savvy social media strategy. From its earliest days, the company leaned into viral marketing, encouraging customer-generated content and building anticipation around its weekly flavor announcements. Its pink box — officially dubbed “Crumbl Pink” by Pantone in 2023 — became instantly recognizable on TikTok and Instagram, not because of paid influencers, but because of thousands of enthusiastic amateurs uploading spoiler reports (yes, there are moles among us), unboxing videos and ratings — a vast army of creators who’ve made it their personal mission to chronicle every Crumbl cookie, flavor by flavor, week after week.

Grace Mary Williams, for instance, has a Monday morning ritual. The 26-year-old food reviewer with 2.7 million TikTok followers lingers outside her local Crumbl franchise on Long Island until its doors open at 9 a.m. and collects her pink box. Prepurchased the night before on Crumbl’s app, it contains that week’s “surprise lineup” of six colorful, overstuffed cookies, among other stomachache-inducing indulgences like cheesecakes, brownies and pies.

“For the size of the cookie, the price really isn’t too bad,” reasons Williams of her treats, which retail for about $5 each, with discounts for larger orders (a 12-pack costs $50). She then sits in her car and, staring into a dashboard-mounted iPhone, samples each dessert, sharing her honest appraisal. As a Crumbl ride-or-die fan, she tends to gush.

On the other end of the TikTok spectrum is Stefan Johnson, whose 8.6 million followers tune in for his snarky food reviews. When he first noticed the brand popping up in his feed in 2021, Johnson, a 35-year-old Black man, assumed the cookies were “the suburban mom staple, the suburban kid staple.” He sensed an opportunity. “I was like, ‘Let me try and crack into this demographic.’ ” His first Crumbl review got 1 million-plus views. “That confirmed it to me — this needs to be a weekly series. There’s almost a gamification of it. What are the six going to be this week? I got to catch ’em all. Almost like Pokémon. It’s brilliant.”

Kelsie Flaim, 29, runs the TikTok account @thehungrykelsey, with 1.4 million followers, and agrees Crumbl’s mystique comes down to the fear of missing out. “I think that scarcity mindset is huge in making people buy into the experience,” she says. “You want to try it before it goes away.”

But it’s not just influencers who are hooked. Crumbl’s cookie cult has expanded into Hollywood, too, where it’s been finding other sorts of eager branding partners. For Disney’s Freakier Friday, it cooked up a Key Lime Blackberry Cake cookie (then switched it midweek with a Blackberry Key Lime Cake — get it?). For Warner Bros.’ Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, it baked an Afterlife Cake — something akin to a giant, fluffy Oreo with a freshly dug grave feel. The company also has partnered with such celebrities as Olivia Rodrigo (designing an interactive online game with her Guts Cookie following her around a map of tour stops), Jimmy Fallon (who hocked the sweets on The Tonight Show) and Benson Boone, whose popular Moonbeam Ice Cream Cookie just made a surprise encore to commemorate the end of his tour. (Boone, a Mormon, has a mountain home a few miles from Crumbl headquarters.)

In April, the Kardashians hijacked the entire Crumbl menu with seven original offerings, including Kris’ Classic Yellow Layer Cake Cookie, Kim’s Snickerdoodle Crumb Cake Cookie and Kylie’s Pink Confetti Sugar Cookie. Only Kourtney’s Flourless Chocolate Cake Cookie, the company’s first venture into gluten-free baking, proved universally unpopular.

In a way, Crumbl’s success has turned its founders into semi-celebrities on their own — or at least it has with Hemsley, who has become the most famous cookie aficionado since that big blue guy on Sesame Street. While McGowan remains largely behind the scenes, it’s Hemsley whose Instagram account is filled with mirror selfies, Real Housewives memes and the pastel aesthetic that defines the company’s identity. If he seems like a natural fit for a bigger platform, rest assured — Netflix has approached him about starring in a reality series. “I don’t know if we want to say anything just yet,” Hemsley teases. “But there’s some things that might come out.”

A onetime missionary stationed in Mexico, Hemsley has a bright smile and even brighter green eyes. He peppers conversation with wholesome vernacular (“I’ll bop on up to the third floor!”). His skin glistens (he shares his moisturizing routine with his 300,000 TikTok followers). He’s fashionable, with a trim, athletic physique (he also posts his workouts) and a uniform of black Abercrombie & Fitch, On sneakers and a Bottega Veneta tote bag.

He also happens to be gay.

Hemsley came out in August in an Instagram announcement. It caused more of a stir than one might expect. “Over the past little while, there have been people online trying to define me, twist things and share conversations in ways that feel harmful. Instead of letting others write my story, I want to share it in my own words,” he posted. “The truth is, over the past few years, I’ve come to understand and accept that I’m gay. It’s taken me a long time to really process this part of myself and even longer to feel comfortable enough to say it out loud.”

Frankly, there had been speculation for years, entire Reddit threads guessing about Hemsley’s sexuality. But the whispers turned deafening after Grant Gibbs — one half of A Twink and a Redhead, a comedy duo with childhood friend Ashley Gill — posted an Aug. 21 TikTok video about Hemsley.

“That man is gay to the gods,” Gibbs said in the clip. “There is a genetic component to sexuality, mama, and let’s just say he has the gene.” The video went viral and has been viewed more than 25 million times.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in his first interview since the incident, Gibbs says he created the video when he came across a TikTok video accusing Hemsley of “giving homophobe in the streets, fairy in the sheets.”

“I clicked on Crumbl CEO and it brought me to all these videos of Sawyer Hemsley where he’s discussing dating younger women or describing the search for ‘Mrs. Crumbl,’ ” he says. “And then there are videos of him giving a house tour and talking about the interior decor of his home. I was genuinely shocked. I was like, ‘That is a gay man.’ He wasn’t hiding it or code-switching in any way.”

Gibbs apologized for the outing (in an awkward train ride video that also went viral). But since coming out, Hemsley has been sharing more about his personal life — most notably the introduction of a boyfriend, Los Angeles-based luxury real estate agent Antonio Bruno, who has been popping up with some regularity on Hemsley’s Instagram grid and Stories. In July, Hemsley purchased a $12 million home on the Bird Streets of Beverly Hills. He says he’s in L.A. “about twice a month” these days — his trick for a painless commute is flying in and out of Burbank — but his Utah home near Crumbl headquarters remains his base.

“These past few months have been some of the happiest of my life,” Hemsley posted alongside an introductory video of a smiling Bruno. Outside of that, however, Hemsley is disinclined to discuss his personal affairs. He does acknowledge that the life of a CBO-as-influencer has its definite downsides, as TikTokers can be rough on him.

As for widespread assumptions that Crumbl, as a Mormon company, must be conservative, or that Hemsley and McGowan are Republicans, McGowan emphasizes, “We take all that stuff out of the equation. We have all kinds of people at Crumbl who are Democrats. We have Republicans here. We have different sexual orientations here. The biggest question on our worker survey is, ‘Can you be yourself at Crumbl regardless of what that is?’ “

Adds Hemsley: “When you cross the threshold of our storefront, everything is left outside. You enter a new world where you can just enjoy our product and smile and be with friends and family. It doesn’t matter what’s outside the door. All that matters in that moment is Crumbl.”

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CRUMBL’s business trajectory has taken a few Wonka-esque detours. While the company doesn’t enslave Oompa-Loompas, the U.S. Department of Labor in 2022 fined 11 franchises for violations of child labor laws impacting 46 workers who were minors, including exceeding permitted work hours and operating “potentially dangerous ovens and machinery.” Crumbl apologized and pledged to foster “a safe and welcoming work environment.”

And then there were the epic flavor fails, including a couple of real whoppers. The infamous Almost Everything Bagel Cookie, for example. It went through seven rounds of testing — and yet customers were still disgusted by the garlic in its topping. That disaster pales compared to what’s widely regarded as the biggest Crumbl face-plant of all time: the Bubble Gum Cookie, which featured a wrapped piece of Dubble Bubble smooshed into its icing. “It was warm,” recalls Flaim. “It was awful.”

Those stumbles aside, the future is looking pretty promising for Crumbl. Back at its Utah HQ, where the walls are lined with pink Crumbl University diplomas and the test kitchen hums with invention, the next big flavor is already in the oven. Maybe it will be a hit. Maybe it will be another bubble gum debacle. Either way, the pink boxes will keep flying out the doors.

“We dropped the ‘Cookies’ from our name in 2024 and expanded into all categories of desserts,” says Hemsley, who spends a portion of his year traveling the world and sampling native desserts for inspiration. “It’s been fun because we go after what is viral. If there’s a viral banana pudding out there, we’re going to outdo it. If there’s a viral chocolate cake or a butter cake, we’re going to make one better.”

The hottest Crumbl product of all time, he points out, isn’t a cookie at all. It’s the Dubai Chocolate Brownie, which they couldn’t keep on shelves when it was introduced in August. But fret not: the kataifi-pistachio-stuffed treat will soon make a hotly anticipated return.

After seven years and more than 1,100 franchises across the U.S. and Canada, Crumbl has just signed its first international deals in Mexico, with more countries on the horizon. Demand abroad is already so strong that in Australia, one enterprising fan once flew boxes of cookies in from Hawaii and resold them at a pop-up store set up in an abandoned gas station — at a steep markup. The global appetite is clear — and so is the company’s ambition.

From this modest office park in Provo, a $2 billion cookie brand has begun to send its sugar-high version of Americana beyond U.S. borders. And back in the test kitchen, amid the scent of browned butter and the buzz of mixers, the next batch is already rising.

“We want to go across the globe and fulfill that mission of bringing people together,” says McGowan. “Let’s leave the cares of the world behind and just have an amazing dessert.”

Adds Hemsley, “Desserts are an international language that everyone understands.”

This story appeared in the Oct. 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.