Crumbl Cookies’ closures have reached 57 stores this year as the Utah cookie chain deals with falling sales, layoffs, and a dirty soda push that did not land with customers.
The numbers come from a Restaurant Business report by editor-in-chief Jonathan Maze. Foot traffic, which is the number of people walking into stores, fell 32 percent in August compared to the same month last year, according to data from the tracking firm Placer.ai. Documents obtained by Restaurant Business show August sales were 70 percent lower than they were two years earlier. Several franchisees told the outlet it was the worst month in company history. A franchisee is a business owner who pays to run a store under the Crumbl name.
Crumbl still has more than 1,000 locations, but at least 55 franchises are listed for sale on broker websites, which points to more Crumbl closures down the road. The company also laid off employees at its Lindon headquarters last month. Entrepreneur reports that much of the franchise support staff was let go.
CEO Jason McGowan, who started Crumbl in 2017, laid it all out for franchisees in a presentation last month. He called things “painful” and put the blame on himself.
“I’m the CEO and the buck stops with me. It’s my fault where we are today,” McGowan said, according to Restaurant Business.
The dirty soda rollout is at the center of the report. Dirty sodas are soft drinks mixed with flavored syrups and creamers, and they are hugely popular in Utah. They did not connect with customers outside of it. Entrepreneur reports McGowan pitched the drinks to franchisees in 2025 and predicted a 20 percent sales boost. Franchisees were angry about paying thousands of dollars for new equipment to make them, and McGowan says August’s Soda Week was the worst week in company history.
The money tells the story too. Average annual sales per location dropped to $1.14 million in 2025, down from a peak of $1.84 million in 2022. That is a loss of $700,000 per store in three years. Profit margins, the share of each sale an owner keeps after paying costs, “exceeded 21% every year from 2019 through 2021,” according to Restaurant Business. Crumbl was one of the hottest brands in the country, and its success spawned a wave of other cookie shops that exploded after the pandemic.
Restaurant Business also points to the rotating menu as a problem. The constant changes forced franchises to quickly learn new recipes and hunt down little-used ingredients, which cuts into the time and money owners have left to run the business.
Then there is the Sunday Rule, which prohibits stores from opening on Sunday. Local owners were reportedly upset about changes to it. Over the years, the rule has been enforced, relaxed, and then enforced multiple times again, so owners could not plan around it.
Leadership is changing as Crumbl closures pile up. Entrepreneur reports that McGowan and cofounder Sawyer Hemsley announced in May that they will step down from day-to-day roles. McGowan says a new CEO is coming soon, along with a new CFO and a new head of marketing.
McGowan also addressed the closures publicly in a statement shared on social media, saying he should have anticipated the challenges sooner and adjusted the company’s course. He thanked franchise owners for their support and wrote, “Our best chapter is still ahead of us.”
