Outside a small Crumbl bakery in midtown Manhattan, there is a pink promotional sign that is supposedly dirty from standing outside in the rain for months, but it is still attracting customers. That picture conveys something about how Jason McGowan amassed his wealth, despite its seemingly accidental effectiveness. Through instinct, momentum, and a product that people couldn’t stop discussing whether they loved it or thought the entire spectacle was a little absurd, rather than through polish or grand design.
Because Crumbl Cookies has never gone public, McGowan’s estimated net worth of $500 million is shrouded in uncertainty. The figure is based on ownership stakes, valuation estimates, and franchise royalty revenue rather than any quarterly filing because the company is not obligated to disclose financials in the same manner as a listed company. Analysts can confidently state that McGowan owns over 50% of a business that earned $122 million in franchise royalties in 2023 alone and produced over $1 billion in system-wide sales. Even if the decimal place shifts depending on who is performing the computation, the math points somewhere big.
There’s something about the origin story that seems almost too good, the kind of thing a screenwriter would cut back on because it’s too obvious. Growing up in a modest Mormon home in Alberta, McGowan left school after the eighth grade. He first arrived in the US as a missionary in Las Vegas, and in 2003, he taught himself web development while sleeping on friends’ floors in Utah. He founded dotcom startups, such as a genealogy website that Ancestry.com eventually purchased in 2011. He later served as the mobile product director at that company. By 2017, McGowan was a 35-year-old tech executive with no prior baking experience and $68,000 he was willing to lose when he and his wife’s cousin, Sawyer Hemsley, opened the first Crumbl location in a soon-to-be-demolished crepe shop in Logan, Utah.
They came dangerously close to losing it multiple times. The initial recipes didn’t work out. Hemsley claims that the amount of dough thrown away caused neighbors to make jokes about dead bodies. Working out of Hemsley‘s parents’ kitchen, they learned from local bakers and YouTube tutorials before deciding on a signature chocolate chip cookie big enough (4.25 inches, almost 1,000 calories) to feel genuinely excessive in the best way. In less than a month, the first store turned a profit. Soon after, Hemsley’s parents opened the second location, referring to it as “date night” when they arrived to assist with crowd control.
McGowan was more aware than most food entrepreneurs that the platform was practically more important than the product. The weekly rotating flavor model, which involves announcing new cookies on Sunday, making them available for seven days before they disappear, is straight out of the fashion industry’s limited-drop strategy. It produced the kind of organic TikTok content that no paid campaign consistently generates, increased urgency, and encouraged return visits. In the end, Crumbl amassed more followers on TikTok than Starbucks, Dunkin’, and Krispy Kreme put together. That’s a big deal. It’s a media company dressed like a cookie company.
However, it seems as though the narrative has moved into a more intricate phase. Between 2022 and 2023, average same-store sales decreased from $1.8 million to $1.2 million. The $2 billion valuation mentioned in acquisition talks has been questioned by franchise analysts as to whether it represents reality or just what the founders would like it to be. Blackstone purchased Jersey Mike’s at 2.2 times system-wide sales, a benchmark that would validate the $2 billion estimate. However, Crumbl essentially sells a single item, and novelty is a currency that has a shorter shelf life than flour. Whether McGowan’s wealth increases or stays the same will depend on his ability to take the brand beyond cookies, as he has indicated he plans to do.
When you look at this from the outside, the beginning is still truly amazing. With $68,000 and a good grasp of how people share content online, a middle school dropout created something valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. That portion of the story has already been written, regardless of what transpires with the valuation.