A Crumbl Exec Gave Us The Scoop On How The Trendy Cookie Chain Develops Its Iconic Weekly Menu

Has any dessert craze swept the nation faster than Crumbl Cookies? The brand, founded in 2017, quickly took the U.S. by storm, and its best cookies are now a weekly dietary staple for many American consumers. However, it tends to be pretty tight-lipped about its inner workings — Crumbl prides itself on keeping its weekly menu drop pretty secretive, and it enjoys the wow factor that comes with releasing new innovations out of the blue. We won't blame the company for keeping its new creations close to the chest, but we were still dying for insider info on the chain. Fortunately, Crumbl's vice president of menu, Amy Eldredge, came to the rescue, giving us the low-down on the company's menu development process.

Eldredge has been with Crumbl since October 2020, and though she started working with the company's operations team, she quickly stepped into a growth and development role. Explaining how she came to hold her current role, Eldredge told us, "I was roped into doing testing ... and just became super familiar with the products. This quickly evolved into me developing a testing program for our R&D team." The program developed by Eldredge is still in place, and involves testing new launches with 75 franchise partner stores, getting feedback both from the employees and customers to perfect new recipes. 

Over time, Eldredge became the obvious fit for Crumbl's VP of menu role, and she now oversees the whole testing program and a menu operations team. Here's what she had to say about the company's inner workings. 

When a chain is releasing different products on a weekly basis, you can assume that innovation is always at the front and center of operational considerations. It would also be logical to assume that, for as many successful creations a brand sees, it sees just as many unsuccessful attempts that never make it to shop floors. Impressively enough, that isn't the case with Crumbl. The company sees through nearly every idea that goes through the R&D process, and very few concepts are abandoned altogether.

When we asked Amy Eldredge about how many concepts actually make it to Crumbl's customers, she said, "I think, more often than not, when we decide upon a concept or a flavor profile, we will do our best to make it work, because we've done the preliminary work to make sure it's a flavor profile that our customers are going to enjoy." If a concept isn't going the way the company hoped, it tends to pivot rather than step away from it, she added, saying, "We'd rather turn it into a different format versus just throw[ing] the whole profile out the window." 

Eldredge explained that it's pretty typical for a treat to see many iterations before its recipe is finalized. There is the odd occasion that a flavor profile doesn't work, and the company does decide it's best to drop it, but Eldredge noted, "That doesn't happen as frequently, like maybe a couple of times a year. But having to change and tweak things is fairly common."

It's no secret by now that Crumbl regularly dishes up non-cookie desserts for consumers to enjoy. Desserts are menu mainstays, and it makes sense that a cookie company would eventually add other sweet treats to its line-up. Nevertheless, coming up with a winning dessert formula wasn't easy, even for a dessert-centric company. Because the company takes into account operational feasibility in addition to developing a winning recipe, coming up with the final formula for its first dessert launch — the cinnamon square — took "several months of development," according to Amy Eldredge.

She also spoke to the innovation process of the company's desserts, saying, "In terms of developing each of our dessert lines, there's been a lot of trial and error, a lot of testing, a lot of different recipes. ... While we're testing our desserts for consumer feedback, we're also testing operationally at store level." Eldredge went on to explain that recipes are most often tweaked in response to employee feedback. If a tester location reports operational failures with a new dessert, the company will change the menu at a higher level in an attempt to make operations easier for store employees. 

Aside from the obvious operational obstacles of launching a new product (or an entirely new product line), such an endeavor also poses a risk, especially for a company that's built a reputation on being extremely committed to one type of product. As much sense as it makes now for Crumbl to be developing desserts, deciding to do so actually posed a big risk for the chain — yes, even with something as seemingly innocuous as a cinnamon square.

Amy Eldredge spoke to the gamble of launching the company's first-ever dessert. She said, "It was a risk ... and we weren't sure if customers were ready to receive something other than a cookie. And I think having the opportunity to release all these new desserts over the course of the last few years ... it's gone really, really well." Of course, it's not pure luck that the desserts were a hit — obviously, the months of innovation play a key role here, as well as the loyal nature of Crumbl customers. Nevertheless, it was still a risk; fortunately, it seems to have really paid off.

Ask any Crumbl fan for a list of the brand's most unique flavors, and you'll probably hear about their take on the Almost Everything Bagel cookie. Known as one of the chain's most polarizing creations, the Almost Everything Bagel cookie was a love-it-or-hate-it kind of deal, and while some fans are constantly begging for its return, others would prefer that it remain in the archives. It's inevitable that a savory cookie would receive mixed responses, but what may come as a surprise is that this cookie took several tries to get its desired profile. 

Speaking about the Almost Everything Bagel cookie, Amy Eldredge said, "I don't know the exact number, but that was one of the most-tested cookies ever tested. ... I think we ran it through the testing program around like five to seven times." Consumers who think its flavor profile was too savory might be surprised to learn that it was originally more bagel-like, and the several rounds of testing Eldredge mentioned refers to the company's flagship store-testing program. That's a lot of times to run something by customers, but we appreciate the chain's commitment to rolling out a quality product, even if it was ultimately controversial.

As with any company constantly releasing new products, flops are unfortunately inevitable, and something will seem like a great idea but ultimately fail miserably. Despite Crumbl's plethora of successes, it's seen its fair share of flavor failures, as well, and there's one in particular that the company is always referring to internally: the bubble gum cookie. Amy Eldredge told us that the cookie "totally flopped, to be completely transparent," adding, "We use it as, like, a kind of example internally [of] what not to do."

The bubble gum cookie may be the most obvious example of a flavor flop, but Eldredge said she suspects that some of the company's other under-performers were simply too ahead of their time. "We did a passion fruit cookie with boba pearls on it a long time ago, which I loved, but it might have been too ... ahead of the curve," she explained, adding, "That flavor's certainly more popular now than when we first launched it." 

It remains to be seen whether the company will try to resurrect any flavors that may be more of a hit today. Personally, we think a passion fruit boba cookie sounds like a great invention, but it may have been one fans were dubious about before the boba tea drink craze swept the nation. 

If you're regularly on Crumbl's Reddit forum or you just keep up with general consumer news regarding the company, you'll have no doubt heard that its flagship locations have seen Dubai chocolate brownies make the rounds of testing. Late to the Dubai chocolate craze? The sweet treat combines chocolate, pistachio, and kataifi (a shredded, noodle-like phyllo dough) into a single decadent dessert that has the nation in a chokehold, as of this writing — and, of course, Crumbl is capitalizing on the trend.

Amy Eldredge was understandably tight-lipped concerning firm details on the Dubai chocolate brownie, but she confirmed that the company is working on that flavor profile after "having people vote on a cheesecake or a brownie version of the Dubai profile." She went on to say, "We took the customer insights from that poll seriously, and we've taken it back to the kitchen, and yeah, it's a fun viral moment that we're definitely exploring." 

We did ask Eldredge for an estimated release date for the dessert, to which she replied, "You know, we don't want to roll anything out before it's gone through the proper channels. ... We're so excited about ... making big splashes and having our dessert launches be a secret." Though no details have been confirmed as of yet, the flavor profile is being tested, and its surprise drop is sure to be a praise-worthy announcement. 

Crumbl devotees have seen scores of celebrity partnerships as of late, with high-profile names such as the Kardashians and Olivia Rodrigo joining the brand for limited cookie releases. As of this writing, the latest partnership was an ice cream cookie concoction that put Benson Boone in Crumbl's spotlight, and this treat got its inspiration from a line in the singer-songwriter's tune "Mystical Magical": "Moonbeam ice cream." Given the song's success and its dessert mention, it was a natural place to get some inspo from, and the cookie seems to have been a success among fans. 

It was such a success, in fact, that it marks a first in the company's history. Amy Eldredge said, "This is the first time we've ever done what we're calling our 'Encore' dessert. We've never done this before, so we ran it all last week, and then we kept it secret that we were going to do a re-release in the Sunday drop this week. ... It's been going really well." 

Only time will tell whether we'll see future "Encore" desserts, but customers should take some solace in knowing they're being listened to. If a particular flavor or collab really hits the spot with consumers, there's at least a chance it'll be on the menu again the following week.

Lastly, we got some fun insider info for fans of Benson Boone who are wondering how involved the star was in creating his signature Crumbl dessert. Amy Eldredge told us that he was a big part of the whole process: "He came into our test kitchen and helped us develop the cookie. ... Absolutely an absolute pleasure to work with him and his team. [I] cannot say enough nice things about these people." 

Of course, the "moonbeam ice cream" lyrical inspiration of the cookie isn't exactly enough to create a flavor out of all on its own, and that's where Boone and the Crumbl team's partnership really came into play. "He definitely told us some of the flavor notes he wanted to have the cookie encompass," she said. Moreover, the collaboration was also incredibly natural, according to Eldredge. She went on to say that it was a two-way street in terms of desiring the partnership, and that the song lyric was what everyone immediately went to when ideating the concept. "It was just a super fun collaboration, where we actually had a concrete ... song lyric to work with and go off of. So, from there, we brought the visual aspects to the table on our side." 

The result? A stunning chocolate cookie with a blend of pink, blue, and purple icing that's both galactic and delicious.