Crumbl's 2026 FDD: What the Filing Shows About a Brand Built on Novelty

What do Kardashians, Pop-Tarts, and dirty soda have in common? Crumbl, and a franchise diligence question.

Crumbl's 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document reports 1,101 locations, all franchised. Item 19 discloses gross sales only: an average of $1,139,162 across 776 reporting locations. The net profit data included in the 2025 FDD is no longer there.

The public conversation, and the franchise one

Fast Company published a fascinating piece on Crumbl this week. Most of the conversation will probably focus on the viral menu items, the sugar backlash, social media fatigue, and whether the brand has pushed novelty too far.

All fair and interesting topics.

But I read it through a franchise lens. The brand is still getting attention, lots of it. But attention is not the same thing as franchisee economics.

Why cookie brands have a harder menu problem

A few weeks ago, I wrote about why ice cream brands may have a structural advantage in the dessert category.

Ice cream and frozen custard concepts can usually layer in cookies, cakes, beverages, toppings, seasonal items, and other adjacent products more easily. The equipment, storage, supply chain, and customer expectation already support variety. A custard shop that adds a cookie sandwich is extending what it already does.

Cookie concepts have a harder road going the other direction. Adding a serious frozen or beverage program means new equipment, new storage, new labor steps, and a customer who has to be taught that the brand does something else now.

That is what makes Crumbl so interesting right now. A rotating weekly menu, drinks, and limited-time collaborations keep the brand in the conversation. For a cookie concept, novelty is the main lever for bringing customers back. The question a franchisee has to ask is what that lever costs to pull, every week, at the unit level.

What Crumbl's 2026 FDD shows

Before a franchisee pays rent, labor, or ingredients, 12% of gross sales goes to royalty and marketing obligations. That's typical for the category. It also means Item 19's gross sales figures are only the starting point for estimating what an owner keeps.

A fully franchised system is also worth noticing. With zero company-owned units, the franchisor's revenue comes from royalties, fees, and supply relationships, not from operating stores alongside its franchisees.

What Item 19 discloses, and what it doesn't

For the 2025 calendar year, Crumbl reports (Item 19, p. 70):

Gross sales only.

Item 19 does not provide net profit data, as it did in the 2025 FDD. Franchisors aren't required to disclose earnings at all, and they decide what to include. When a category of data that appeared last year is removed this year, that change is itself a disclosure worth asking about.

The figures also reflect 776 reporting locations, approximately 74% of eligible full-year locations.

Which naturally raises the question: what about the other 26%?

The FDD explains which locations were included and why. A prospective franchisee should read those exclusion criteria closely. Locations that closed, transferred, or didn't operate a full year often fall outside the reported group, and those are frequently the ones a buyer most needs to understand.

Questions to bring to the franchisor and to current owners

• Why was net profit data removed from Item 19, and will the franchisor share it?
• Which locations make up the 26% not included in the reported figures?
• How have average gross sales moved over the past three filings?
• What do new menu launches require from franchisees in equipment, training, and marketing spend?
• What does Item 20 show for closures, transfers, and terminations, and what do former owners listed there say?

The year-over-year view

We have also been reviewing the year-over-year FDD comparison, and that makes the diligence question even more interesting. More on that in a separate piece.

The point

When a concept is driven by weekly drops, influencer reactions, limited-time products, and constant novelty, the franchise question is not just whether consumers are still talking.

They clearly are.

The question is whether the unit economics still work for franchisees.

The public story is Crumbl's menu. The franchise story is what the FDD does, and does not, tell you.