Crumbl Brand Guidelines: Two Utah Cousins, a Long Pink Box & a Weekly Menu

A cookie recipe, a family shop and a menu that changes on Mondays.

Crumbl is a franchise chain of dessert bakeries based in Lindon, Utah. It was founded in 2017 by two cousins, Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley, Restaurant Business reported in October 2026, and the company’s own history page gives the same year and names both men as co-founders. The company says the pair set out to perfect a milk chocolate chip cookie, and that the founders and their families then opened the first Crumbl shop in Logan, Utah. English Wikipedia adds that Hemsley was a student at Utah State University in Logan at the time, and that the chain was previously branded Crumbl Cookies.

The company says the first shop was laid out as an open-concept kitchen, so that customers could watch their cookies being mixed, balled and baked, and that delivery, catering and a weekly rotating menu followed. That menu became the core of the format. Restaurant Business described it in 2026 as six rotating cookies every week plus two permanent flavours, the Chocolate Chip and the Pink Sugar Cookie, with the new line-up arriving every Monday; English Wikipedia says the rotating flavours are drawn from a library of hundreds of recipes. The shops are closed on Sundays, and Restaurant Business reported that the franchise agreement keeps operators from working in the stores that day.

Growth came quickly, and almost entirely through franchising. According to Restaurant Business, Crumbl went from 55 shops in 2019 to 327 by 2021 and to more than 1,000 by 2024, and finished 2025 with 1,101. The same publication described it as the largest cookie chain in the country by 2023. Outside the United States, English Wikipedia records shops in Canada and an expansion into Mexico, with the first Mexican shop opening in Mexico City on 28 July 2026.

A long pink box and a one-word mark.

Crumbl’s look rests on its packaging more than on its shopfronts. The company says its 4-pack pink box, a long box that holds the cookies side by side, was developed in 2018 by Hemsley and fellow college classmates, and it calls the pink its signature colour. Restaurant Business wrote in October 2026 that the chain’s minimalist design was “highlighted by the long, pink boxes that make the cookies appear almost as if they are on display,” and linked that look to the brand’s reach on social media, where the company counted more than 17 million followers across Instagram and TikTok.

The identity was refreshed at the end of 2023. On 29 November 2023 Restaurant Business reported that Crumbl had unveiled a new colour scheme and a changed logo. The new mark dropped the chef figure known as the “Bakerhead” and also dropped the word “cookies,” leaving the single word Crumbl in black, in a typeface of the company’s own, over a shade it calls Pantone Crumbl Pink, a custom pink created earlier that year. Hemsley, then chief branding officer, said in a statement that it was “not a complete rebrand, but rather enhancements” to the existing brand, and the rollout began with an updated app icon and social media profile. English Wikipedia dates the wider change of logo, colours and visual identity to 2024, the year the chain began adding desserts other than cookies, such as brownies, pies and cakes, to its weekly line-ups.

The chain also runs themed weeks and tie-ins, among them a Minecraft week in September 2026, according to Restaurant Business. The pink box has also travelled without the company: in October 2024 The Guardian reported that an unaffiliated pop-up near Bondi Beach in Sydney had sold Crumbl cookies flown in from abroad, and that Crumbl answered by saying it would speed up its own plans to open in Australia.

How the category presents itself.

Doughnut, cookie and cupcake chains sell small things that are eaten quickly, so much of their identity has to work at the counter and in the hand. The box, the bag and the cup travel further than any shop sign in a takeaway trade. Crumbl is a clear case: its own history page calls its long pink box a signature, and Restaurant Business wrote in 2026 that the box makes the cookies look almost as if they are on display.

The product itself is often the second carrier. Glazed rings seen through a window, warm cookies on a counter and cupcakes stacked into towers are the images these companies choose to publish on their own sites and social channels. Some chains add a time or a temperature to the promise: Insomnia Cookies built its name around warm cookies sold late into the night, with shops near college campuses open until 3 a.m., as Restaurant Business reported in 2018.

Flavour naming tends to be plain and descriptive. A cookie or doughnut is usually named after the dessert or ingredient it borrows from, as with the Blueberry Muffin and Dubai Chocolate Brownie that Restaurant Business reported on Crumbl’s menu in 2026, and rotating or seasonal flavours are announced week by week so that the menu itself becomes news. Shops are generally identified by their town, street or campus rather than given names of their own.

Behind the shopfront, corporate pages tell a founder story and, more rarely, an ownership story. Several of the chains in this group began with one person or one family and one shop, then passed through franchising, a larger food company or a private-equity investor. Those changes are dated in trade and business press, and each guide here gives them as dated facts.

Private equity, fewer shops and a change at the top.

Ownership has changed in stages. In 2025 Crumbl sold a preferred equity stake to the private-equity firm TSG Consumer Partners, Restaurant Business reported in October 2026, citing the company’s franchise disclosure document. In May 2026 McGowan and Hemsley announced that they would step back from their day-to-day roles once replacements were found, while remaining on the board, the same report said. In July 2026 the chain’s founding chief technology officer stepped away from that role.

Restaurant Business described 2026 as a hard year for the chain. It reported that sales had declined over the previous two years, and its own analysis of local reports and of the store count on the company’s website found that at least 57 Crumbl shops had closed during the year, while at least 55 franchises were listed for sale on broker websites. It also reported that a line of “dirty sodas,” flavoured drinks added to the menu in the spring of 2026, had not lifted sales, and that a promotion built around the Minecraft game in September had brought stronger trade for a time. Crumbl did not respond to the publication’s requests for comment.

For a design guide, Crumbl shows how a single box shape and a single pink can hold a brand together across more than a thousand franchised shops, while a weekly menu supplies the novelty. Compare Insomnia Cookies, another American cookie chain, and Sprinkles. For this guide we use a soft box pink, a deep rose, dough cream and near-black with a rounded geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Crumbl’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.