FILE: A selection of cookies from Crumbl.
FILE: A selection of cookies from Crumbl.
First, life wasn’t so sweet for cupcakes, as onetime dessert darling Sprinkles Cupcakes abruptly closed all of its stores in late 2025. Now it appears that the market for luxury cookies might slowly be chipping away as well.
Crumbl, the once fast-growing chain known for its rotating weekly menu of thick, doughy cookies, has recently shuttered 57 locations nationwide, including at least seven in California, according to the Desert Sun.
The California closures span the state, and include Paso Robles, Pismo Beach, Hanford, Ladera Ranch, Mira Mesa, Cupertino and Westlake Village near Los Angeles. Shuttered stores have also been reported in Alabama, Florida and Kentucky. SFGATE reached out to Crumbl for further comment on the closures but did not hear back in time for publication.
Founded by cousins Sawyer Hemsley and Jason McGowan in Utah in 2017, Crumbl is known for its pink boxes and sometimes zany flavors (everything bagel and Hot Cheetos, for instance). The company went viral during the pandemic for its social media flavor drops, eventually amassing more than 10 million followers on TikTok.
FILE: A Crumbl storefront.
FILE: A Crumbl storefront.
Crumbl took a tech-forward approach to its business, embracing third-party delivery as part of its franchising business structure to make it easy for customers to get their hands on signature chocolate chip and pink sugar cookies. It also invested in partnerships with celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Olivia Rodrigo.
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According to Restaurant Business, average-unit volumes hit $1.7 million in 2021 and $1.84 million in 2022. A 2022 report by Dataessential declared Crumbl the fastest-growing dessert brand, and the fourth-fastest-growing food chain of any kind in the country, selling close to a million cookies a day. The growth didn’t stop there: According to Forbes, Crumbl opened 295 stores in 2023, for a total of more than 1,000 stores nationwide by 2024. And in 2025, Bloomberg reported that the company had taken as much as $500 million in cash or loans from private equity firms.
That said, things weren’t always on the rise. In 2022, the company was found to have violated child labor laws in six states by U.S. Department of Labor. This year, a big bet on so-called “Dirty Sodas,” a category popular in Utah, didn’t catch on nationally and prompted online backlash for the sodas’ high caloric content. In May, McGowan and Hemsley stepped down from their roles as chief executive officer and chief brand officer, though both remain on the board of the company.
FILE: Crumbl has closed multiple locations in California.
FILE: Crumbl has closed multiple locations in California.
“I believe now is the right time to bring in new leadership through an open search process,” McGowan wrote in an Instagram post announcing the role changes.
Since then, the dough simply hasn’t been coming in the way it used to. Restaurant Business reports that Crumbl’s sales in August were 70% lower than they were two years earlier, according to an internal document viewed by the publication. In addition, it reports, “several franchisees said it was the worst month in company history.”
Despite the company’s recent challenges, it doesn’t appear that it’s going to fully crumble anytime soon. Crumbl still operates more than 100 locations in the Golden State, and more than 1,000 nationwide.
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