Crumbl Cookies: tiktok-powered franchise scaled to 1,000+ locations

The founding and history

Crumbl Cookies was founded in 2017 by cousins Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley in Logan, Utah. The single founding location grew rapidly into a franchise model. The defining product/marketing mechanic: a weekly-rotating menu of 4 cookies (plus the always-available original chocolate chip), with new flavors announced each Sunday night via social media.^[1]

The weekly drop mechanic created multiple compounding effects: habit-forming customer behavior (customers visited each week to try new flavors before they rotated out), continuous content cadence (52 new menu reveals per year generated continuous TikTok and Instagram content), and FOMO scarcity (flavors only available for one week create urgency).

The playbook executed

Crumbl's TikTok presence became enormous — 10M+ followers, hundreds of millions of weekly views. The content was a mix of: official Crumbl content (menu reveals, behind-the-scenes baking, locations), customer-generated content (taste tests, reviews, rankings), and creator content (food creators ranking weekly flavors, mukbang-style consumption videos).^[2]

The franchise model scaled aggressively — from 1 location in 2017 to 1,000+ locations by 2024. Franchisees benefited from the centralized weekly menu, the existing TikTok-driven demand, and the operational systems Crumbl built for store operations. The franchise economics worked because new locations entered markets where Crumbl already had social-media demand awaiting them.

The results

Crumbl has navigated the late-2024 / 2025 franchise saturation challenges (multiple locations in the same metros competing for the same customers, slower same-store sales growth) but remains one of the fastest-growing food franchises in US history.^[3]

What this case study teaches

• Weekly menu rotations create habit + content cadence + scarcity simultaneously — operationally complex but structurally compounding.
• TikTok content is structural for QSR brands — food content performs unusually well on TikTok.
• Franchise scaling leverages social-media demand — new locations open into pre-existing TikTok awareness.
• FOMO scarcity drives urgency — weekly availability windows create purchase pressure.
• Family-operated franchise systems can scale fast — Crumbl's family operating model navigated the rapid growth.

Related concepts and channels

For franchise-specific marketing, see our franchising advertising thinking. For TikTok marketing strategy, see TikTok Ads overview. For Stanley's adjacent TikTok-driven brand resurgence, see Stanley case study.