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The most viral cookies in the country are coming to Hampton Roads this year.
Don’t worry, they’re not dangerous. But perhaps uniquely among a new world of gourmet cookie chains, Crumbl Cookies has traveled mainly by a conflagration of teen videos on the web. On TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, young Crumbl fanatics review each ‘grammable flavor as it arrives in its trademark pink box.
In a video viewed by tens of thousands, a young YouTuber named Francesca granted a rave 8 out of 10 review to a lemon-glazed flavor of the week (“I love anything lemon!”) but a 6 to a chilled sugar. “Mom’s recipe” chocolate and peanut butter scored a perfect 10.
Other would-be influencers may review videogenic peanut-butter-and-jelly swirls spread out across a thick and (yes) crumbly cookie. “Fruit pizza” arrives with blueberries and raspberries atop lemon cream. Cake batter cookies come adorned with a “flower” of frosting.
“People love the way we’ve been doing it,” said Crumbl spokeswoman Anna Tibbitts, who said the company conducts elaborate “unboxings” of each new flavor online. “A lot of the hype came organically. It kind of snowballed.”
It snowballed quickly. The Utah-founded company only started in 2017, but its franchises have slingshotted rapidly across the country — often via family and friends of its Utah founders, cousins Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley.
Hemsley conducted beta testing on Crumbl’s original chocolate chip cookie while in college, handing out cookies on campus or to people at gas stations. (The company now has a concept kitchen and professional pastry chefs.)
McGowan, a veteran of the tech industry, provided the investment and technological know-how. Over the past couple of years, the cookie chain has ballooned to more than 100 locations nationwide. Each pink and black and white store is primed, of course, for maximum impact on your Instagram feed.
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Starting mid-July, those locations will include one at the Marketplace at Hilltop in Virginia Beach. Five more locations are planned in relatively quick succession: First Hampton, then Chesapeake, then three more in Newport News, Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
The Hampton Roads franchisers began with a location in small-town Rexburg, Idaho, said operating partner Erick Wills. At the time, he was a high school economics teacher. His daughter had gone to school with Hemsley and told her parents they might want to get on board.
When Wills first looked into the chain, there were only 12 or so locations, all in Utah. He thought, “This tastes fantastic, but in the end it’s a cookie… What makes these cookies different?”
Wills, ever the economics teacher, did his market research: He liked the idea of the photogenic, rotating flavors; the all-natural ingredients; the always made-to-order cookies and the marketing savvy.
So, along with partners Richie and Ryan Webb — majority owners of the planned Hampton Roads stores — he and his wife jumped in on a Rexburg franchise.... and opened smack into the jaws of the pandemic. Their college town emptied of students. And somehow, their cookie store thrived anyway.
“We actually kind of coined the phrase in our local community that Crumbl Cookies were mental health providers,” he said. “We had a lot of people that came in during the pandemic. They said, ‘You know what? We can’t go out anywhere. But we can go home and eat our Crumbl Cookies.’ ”
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By the end of 2020, the store was so successful they decided to expand. The Webbs had family in Virginia already. And after visits to Virginia Beach, Wills said he and his family fell in love with the place.
They plan to open new locations in pairs, moving onto the next two when the first two are running sustainably. The locations will serve the two baseline flavors — chocolate chip and sugar cookies — alongside four rotating specialty flavors at a time. Crumbl also serves ice cream versions of each cookie on offer.
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Wills said they plan to do a large amount of community outreach when they open, sending free cookies to fire departments, police departments, nonprofits and, of course, Instagram influencers.
“We’ve got a women’s shelter here in Rexburg that gets our cookies at least once a week,” he said. “We just deliver them at the end of the night, anything that’s left over, because we think those community partners are so important.”
In part, Wills said, they chose Virginia Beach because it’s where their family wanted to live — they plan to “snowbird” between Idaho and Virginia Beach.
“Virginia Beach just felt right,” he said. “I love the atmosphere. We spent a couple of weeks down there ... and I told my wife, ‘Boy, I found the place we’re going to retire, that’s for sure.’”
Crumbl Cookies plans to open in mid-July at 737 First Colonial Road, Virginia Beach, in the Marketplace at Hilltop. A second location is planned for late summer at 1620 Merchant Lane, Hampton, in Peninsula Town Center. More locations are planned in Chesapeake, Norfolk, Newport News and Virginia Beach.