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Two cousins with $68,000 and no baking experience borrowed the streetwear industry's weekly drop mechanic, rotated their menu every Sunday, and turned manufactured scarcity plus 16 million social followers into a billion dollars of systemwide sales
~300M cookies sold in 2022 (company-reported) · 980+ US stores plus 9 international · 500+ franchise partners · $68,000 founder seed capital · 16M+ social followers
"In the fashion industry they came up with this idea of these drops, and it's an idea that we use in our business — it creates that hype, it creates that excitement, and it also creates some scarcity, because you can only have that cookie for that week."
Fewer bars = easier, cheaper, or faster for an AI-assisted solo builder. Editorial judgments based on the case details.
Jason McGowan is originally from Canada. He came to the United States, slept on a friend's floor, and worked in technology at companies including Ancestry. "Before Crumbl I was all about technology, I loved building things that were digital." Sawyer Hemley is his wife's cousin. They did not know each other well, but Jason had done business with him before and had invested in one of his companies, which did not work out — "ultimately he had such good character, I thought if I ever get the chance to work with this guy I need to do that." In 2017 they decided to start a cookie company. Neither had any experience baking. Jason's own summary of the sequence: "we did everything backwards that you should do in a business — we thought let's do a business together, and then we came up with a product, then we bought the equipment, and then we started making the product." The recipe development is the part worth studying, because it is a rigorous experimental method applied to a cookie. Jason had a full-time job and Sawyer was in school, so they met late at night, made cookies, and taste-tested. They changed one variable at a time — "we would change out one thing, like the milk chocolate chips versus semi-sweet, which one would be better" — and then ran blind comparisons on strangers: "we had no shame, we would go to gas stations and friends and family and we'd present two cookies and we'd say which one tastes better." It took four or five months to arrive at one cookie. "Every single family member that we had at the time said, you guys are crazy." They found a building in Logan, Utah that was scheduled for demolition in six months. That was part of the appeal: "we have no idea if this business is going to work, this could be really fun." They negotiated the rent down to around $800 a month. Jason put in $68,000 of his own money as seed capital, and everything since has been funded from the business. By 2022 Crumbl reported its first year of billion-dollar systemwide sales, with over 980 stores in the US and nine international locations.
Crumbl recruited its first customers months before there was a store to sell them anything.
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Data credibility: ⚠️ Promotional founder-featured brand video. Both co-founders speak on camera and all figures are company-stated and unaudited: $68,000 of founder seed capital, approximately 300 million cookies sold in 2022 (explicitly attributed by the narrator to what "Crumbl says"), first year of billion-dollar systemwide sales in 2022, over 980 US stores plus nine international locations, over 500 franchise partners, more than 16 million social followers, roughly $800/month rent on the first Logan, Utah building, more than 15 locations opened in the first two years, the in-house app launched in October 2018, and 50 test store locations. ⚠️ Most important caveat: the founder says "billion dollar yearly systemwide sales," which is the combined revenue of every store in the franchise network — the majority belonging to independent franchise owners — not the company's own revenue. The video's title reframes this as what the company "brings in," which is not what is said. No franchisor revenue, franchise fee, royalty rate, store-level unit economics, app download or technology cost figures are disclosed anywhere, and we have not estimated any. Location is directly stated: the first store was in Logan, Utah, the network is described as "across the US", and the CEO says he is originally from Canada and came to the United States.
The first dollar was a cookie handed across a counter in Logan, Utah, in 2017. There was no waitlist, no pre-sale and no launch campaign, and neither the price nor the opening-day take is disclosed anywhere.
The turning point was store number three, and at the time it looked like a breakdown. It was the first franchise location, it opened with a long menu, and "the doors were just flooded with people and lines were just wrapped around the corner."
The stretch with no feedback came before the first store, not after it. For four or five months there was no revenue, no customers and no encouragement.
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