Crumbl is closing stores in 2026: 21 closings we can name, 10 more stores off its locator, a franchisee bankruptcy, and "declining sales"

Crumbl is closing stores in 2026: 21 closings we can name, 10 more stores off its locator, a franchisee bankruptcy, and "declining sales"

Crumbl, the pink-box cookie chain, is shrinking. Restaurant Business reported on October 19 that Crumbl has closed 65 locations since April 30 and opened 15, for 50 net closures, and that the median store made a profit of $1,832 in September. Our records name 21 closings reported in local news, from Jersey City, NJ in January to Paso Robles, CA and Pismo Beach, CA in October, and 10 more stores in five states that have been removed from Crumbl's own store locator. In all, 31 stores in 13 states. In Louisville, KY, one store closed after its owners filed for bankruptcy on October 1, the Louisville Courier Journal reported, citing court records. The company laid off headquarters staff in Lindon, UT in August, and Entrepreneur later reported cuts to much of its franchise support staff.

The stores we can name

What is happening

The stores that closed were not all new, and they were not all weak locations in new markets.

Old stores and young ones. The Vienna, VA store was the chain's first in Virginia. "Crumbl Vienna, Virginia's first, has closed after 6 years," read the message shared with customers, MoCo Show reported. The Hanford, CA store closed in late August after five years, the store announced on Instagram, according to the Palm Springs Desert Sun. The Jersey City store closed less than a year after it opened. The Chapel Hill, NC store on West Franklin Street lasted just over three years, and the Milford, CT store over three years.

California, more than anywhere. Nine of our 31 stores are in California, from Cupertino, CA to San Diego, CA. Crumbl has "more than 130" stores in California, the most of any state, the Desert Sun reported, citing ScrapeHero. "Most recently, the chain closed its San Luis Obispo County locations, with its Paso Robles and Pismo Beach stores shuttering in October," it wrote, citing the San Luis Obispo Tribune and KSBY. Both stores had already dropped off Crumbl's locator in our weekly checks.

Abrupt endings. In Germantown, MD, an employee told Patch that management said sales had been turned off at the store after staff noticed a decline in orders. A sign on the door read: "We are permanently closed." Patch reported that the Milford store had closed and its website had stopped working.

A franchisee in bankruptcy. In Kentucky, "a Louisville Crumbl location permanently closed after its owners filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 1, the Louisville Courier Journal reported, citing court records," the Palm Springs Desert Sun wrote. We have not read the filing itself, so we don't print its figures.

Cuts at headquarters. Crumbl laid off employees at its Lindon, UT headquarters in August, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. At least one employee was told by an email that arrived shortly after work on August 12. The company did not say how many lost their jobs. It said it made the "difficult decision to reduce the size of our corporate team." In October, Entrepreneur reported that the company also laid off much of its franchise support staff. The co-founders, Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley, said in May they would step back from day-to-day roles.

Why it is happening

The sources give the reason directly, and it is sales.

AL.com, reporting the Montgomery closing on October 15: "Crumbl Cookies, facing declining sales, have begun closing several stores, including one in Montgomery."

The numbers behind that come from Restaurant Business, as repeated by KUTV, AL.com and TheStreet:

• Fewer customers. Traffic at the chain's more than 1,000 stores was down 32% year over year, according to Placer.ai data.
• A very bad August. An internal Crumbl document showed August sales 70% below the same month two years earlier. "Several franchisees said it was the worst month in company history," Maze wrote, KUTV reported.
• Lower sales per store. Average annual sales per location fell from a peak of $1.84 million in 2022 to $1.14 million in 2025.
• A new product that did not help. Crumbl added "dirty sodas" in July 2025. TheStreet reported that the line "did not help generate significant revenue." CEO Jason McGowan told franchisees, "It's my fault where we are today," in a presentation Restaurant Business first reported.

Thin profits now. Restaurant Business reported on October 19 that "The offer comes as Crumbl's sales remain weak and many stores are unprofitable and closing." The offer is a new $1.99 soda-and-cookie deal. September sales were down 50% from two years earlier, better than August. But "median per-store profit was $1,832 during the month. That's less than $22,000 on an annualized basis." "Sales this month have been down again," it reported in October. "October has been miserable," one franchisee said.

The CEO's own words. On October 9, McGowan wrote on LinkedIn, as Restaurant Business reported: "The restaurant industry is facing real headwinds right now, and Crumbl is no exception." He added: "As a leader, I should have anticipated them sooner and adjusted our course. That is on me."

One argument, labeled as such. TheStreet has argued that two things are working against a $5 cookie: shoppers cutting back on treats they don't need, and appetite-suppressing GLP-1 drugs. The same article quotes Krispy Kreme's CEO saying his company has "seen no obvious impact from GLP-1s." We note the argument. We don't rely on it.

A peer. Crumbl is not the only cookie chain in trouble. Chip City, the New York cookie chain, closed all its remaining shops on October 1, telling staff that "Consumers are spending less, and their preferences are evolving," QNS reported. We wrote that up in our Chip City brief.

Trend or churn? A repeating pattern in 2026

We can't measure this against earlier years with our own records, so we call it a repeating pattern in 2026, not a measured trend.

What the reporting shows is a chain getting smaller. Restaurant Business counted at least 57 Crumbl closings in 2026 by early October, and its editor raised that to at least 60 on October 7. On October 19 it reported a new count: "Crumbl has closed 65 locations since April 30, according to a count on the company's website compared with a master list that we have obtained from that date. It has opened another 15, giving the brand 50 net closures." It said the company started 2026 with 1,101 locations. Those are Restaurant Business's figures, not ours. The reasons come from Crumbl and its operators: falling sales, thin store profits, and a CEO who told franchisees, "It's my fault where we are today."

It is also a franchisee story. TheStreet reported the 57 as closings by "store operators," and at least 55 franchises are listed for sale on broker sites. Restaurant Business editor Jonathan Maze reported on October 1 that Crumbl is no longer letting more franchisees close without the possibility of liquidated damages, a penalty in the contract for ending early. On October 19, Restaurant Business added that "A six-store franchisee in New England filed for bankruptcy last month and is selling its locations." We have no court record of that case yet. So the retrenchment is happening one owner at a time, not through an announced corporate closing program. We have seen no closing list from Crumbl.

Our 21 closings and 10 locator removals are a sample of the stores behind that count, not a second measurement. They show where the closings are landing: 13 states, in college towns and suburbs alike, and most of all in California.

What we counted, and what we left out

What is in the 31. Each is a single Crumbl store with its own record. Twenty-one were reported closed by a news source. Ten were removed from Crumbl's own store locator, which we check every week. A locator removal is not a closing date, so those rows show none. We call all ten removed, not closed, until a news or court source confirms them. Our checks confirmed the removals between September 26 and October 24.

Two stores moved up. Paso Robles, CA and Pismo Beach, CA were on this page as locator removals. The Palm Springs Desert Sun has since reported both closed in October, so they now count as closings. Each is a secondary mention: the Desert Sun credits the San Luis Obispo Tribune and KSBY.

Dates. We only publish dates a source states. Jersey City closed on Saturday, January 3. For Germantown, Patch said the store closed "Friday," and MoCo Show later said May 2, so we give the month. Milford's last day "appears to have been June 13," Patch reported, citing The Connecticut Scoop, so we give June. Where a source gave no date, we show when it reported the closing.

Weaker sources, labeled. Tallahassee, FL comes from one line in the Chapel Hill story, which named the city but not the store. Sacramento comes from the Sacramento Bee, which cited the store's Yelp page. West Linn, OR comes from one line in a story about a Starbucks closing: "The central village also recently lost Crumbl Cookies." Ladera Ranch, CA and the Mira Mesa store in San Diego, CA come from one sentence in the Desert Sun that cites Yelp listings, and Cupertino's month, April, comes from the same sentence. Melbourne, FL and Charlotte, NC come from one line in Restaurant Business that names the cities but not the stores. Augusta, GA and Douglasville, GA come from one line in the Savannah Morning News, which credits "a community announcement" and says those stores "closed within the past few months."

Left out.

• Suwanee, GA. The same Savannah Morning News line names it, but the store is on a list of Crumbl closings that Fast Company published in December 2025, so we count it as a 2025 closing, not a 2026 one.
• Savannah, GA as a news closing. Restaurant Business and the Savannah Morning News say a Savannah store closed, but neither names it. We count the Sandfly store as a locator removal and don't pair the two.
• Rochester, NH. It dropped off the locator at its old web address, but a Rochester store is still on Crumbl's New Hampshire page. It may be the same store under a new address, so we don't count it.
• A San Diego store (Clairemont) whose web address moved. It is still listed.
• A second Louisville-area store at a Shelbyville Road address. It is still open. Our first record of the bankruptcy had the wrong store.
• The New England franchisee bankruptcy, which is Restaurant Business's report. We have no record of its stores yet.
• The national "57" and "65" figures, which are Restaurant Business's counts, not ours. We name them and don't add them to our total.
• Headquarters layoffs. They are in our file as layoff records, not store closings.

Records come from local news reporting, court records and weekly store-locator tracking. This is a living page: as more Crumbl stores are confirmed, they join the table and the changelog records it.

Updated: October 26, 2026

Changelog: October 19, 2026: first published with 10 Crumbl closings and 8 locator removals, 18 stores in 13 states, from the 2026-10-17 edition. October 26, 2026: added 13 stores from the 2026-10-24 edition (9 news closings and 4 locator removals), for 31 stores in 13 states; Paso Robles, CA and Pismo Beach, CA moved from locator removals to closings after news reports; added Restaurant Business's October 19 count of 65 closings since April 30.

Street names are from our records; house numbers are held for subscribers. The Store Closure Watch file for the week of October 24, 2026 holds 351 records. As of October 26, 2026.