Crumbl Cookies Average Unit Volumes Fell 16% in 2025 as Franchise Economics Face Pressure

Originally reported by Restaurant Business.

Crumbl Cookies, the Salt Lake City-based franchise chain founded in 2017, posted average unit volumes of $1.14 million in 2025, a 16% decline from nearly $1.4 million the prior year, according to an analysis of the company's franchise disclosure document first reported by Restaurant Business in April 2026. The drop largely erased the 17% recovery the chain had recorded in 2024, completing something of a two-year round trip in per-location performance.

The figures arrive against a backdrop of considerable scale. Crumbl now operates more than 1,000 locations across all 50 states, Canada, and Puerto Rico, per the company, and Restaurant Business, citing data from its sister company Technomic, reported that Crumbl generated more than $1.3 billion in total system sales in 2025, well ahead of the next-largest cookie chain, Insomnia Cookies, which produced less than $300 million. On a per-location basis, Insomnia generates $865,000 per store while Fat Brands-owned Great American Cookies produced $400,000 per location, leaving Crumbl the clear volume leader in its segment even at its reduced average.

The 2025 franchise disclosure document drew scrutiny beyond the unit-volume line: Crumbl opted not to include profitability figures in the filing, the first time it had done so since beginning to publish the document, Restaurant Business noted. The chain had already faced questions after an earlier FDD showed a wide gap between average and median profitability, suggesting uneven earnings across the franchise network, though Crumbl subsequently amended that document, citing a miscalculation. To offset softening economics, the company has expanded its menu into pies, cakes, and mini cookies, and more recently introduced a value-priced tier that includes Dirty Sodas and Cookie Thins starting at $0.99, per the company.

Why it matters

Crumbl's volume trajectory illustrates a pattern increasingly visible in viral-first restaurant concepts: social media reach can drive explosive unit growth, but it does not guarantee the repeat-visit frequency that sustains franchise economics at scale. The rotating-menu mechanic that fueled Crumbl's early momentum becomes a treadmill demanding constant product development investment as novelty fades. The FDD transparency issue compounds this: franchisees making capital decisions rely on that disclosure data, and its omission signals that system-level profitability remains a sensitive subject even as new product lines project confidence. Crumbl's system-sales total still dwarfs competitors, but the gap between its average and median unit economics, raised in earlier filings, suggests underperformance may be concentrating risk among a subset of operators rather than spreading evenly across the network.

What to watch

The central open question is whether Crumbl's value-menu pivot and menu diversification can stabilize per-unit economics without diluting the premium positioning that originally drove customer visits. If average unit volumes continue declining toward the range generated by smaller rivals, the franchise proposition becomes increasingly difficult to defend on economics alone, and pressure on the disclosure document's profitability section will intensify ahead of the next filing cycle.

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Sources

• Restaurant Business: Crumbl's unit volumes declined last year
• Crumbl Cookies | Fresh-Baked Cookies Near You | Delivery, Pickup & Carryout
• Press | Crumbl