🧠 Crumbl's $1B Recipe of Ritual + Repetition = Revenue

Today’s Edition of Captivated: Crumbl’s $1B Recipe: How Crumbl turned a handful of cookies into a Billion-Dollar habit, with psychology

“Wait, what’s on the menu this week?” 🍪 

If you’ve ever found yourself refreshing the Crumbl menu on a Sunday night, just to peak at what the flavors are now … yeah, same.

Crumbl knows how to keep people coming back.

Each week, they rotate just a handful of cookie flavors, that's it. By the time you fall in love with one? It’s gone. New ones arrive. The cycle continues.

And that’s the billion-dollar habit.

They grew from a single Utah storefront to 1,000+ locations and $1B+ in revenue, all in under 6 years…

(continues below).

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🧭 INSIDE THIS EDITION

• More Cookies

• Smart Tool You Can Use #1

• Did You Know?

• What's the Big Deal?

• The Psychology Behind It

• Steal this Strategy for Yourself

• tl;dr

• Smart Tool You Can Use #2

📈 DID YOU KNOW?

Crumbl Cookies has launched more than 300 unique flavors, sold over $300 million cookies, and hit $1B in revenue within 6 years.

🤔

 .. What’s the Big Deal? ..

… Most businesses think the goal is to offer more.

More SKUs. More options. More personalization.

Crumbl does the opposite. They focus attention instead of spreading it.

• Just enough variety to keep it interesting

• Just enough scarcity to feel urgent

• Just enough novelty to keep us checking back every week

With consistency, curiosity, and control, they built a ritual. And people don’t skip rituals.

🧠

 .. Brain Science-Backed: The Psychology Behind It ..

1. 🧠  SCARCITY BIAS:

Limited availability makes something feel more valuable. 

When a cookie’s only around for a few days, it feels like a one-time opportunity. That’s how our brains assign value, and makes us want it even more.

2. 🧠 ANTICIPATION = DOPAMINE:

Dopamine makes us feel goood, and, it isn’t just released when we get the thing, it starts building the second we expect it.

Crumbl’s weekly drop triggers that pre-reward dopamine spike. It makes the act of checking the menu feel good, even before we taste a crumb.

3. 🧠 RITUAL-DRIVEN RETENTION:

Same day. Every week. New flavors.

When something becomes part of a person’s routine, it moves from a choice to a habit. Crumbl has brain-trained people to show up weekly without even thinking about it.

4. 🧠 PARADOX OF CHOICE, SOLVED:

Too many options = decision fatigue. When people face too many choices, they freeze or bail.

Crumbl makes the decision easy by offering only a handful of options, usually between 6-8. It’s enough to feel like you have options, without creating overwhelm.

5. 🧠 NOVELTY-SEEKING BEHAVIOR:

The brain gets bored easily. We crave newness.

New flavors every week satisfy our craving for something fresh.

Even if you just had cookies last week (no judgement!), your brain lights up again when the lineup changes. That fresh flavor release hits just like a new episode of your favorite show.

🥷

 .. Steal this Strategy for Yourself ..

1 - Limit What’s Available:

• More isn’t better. Better is better. Fewer choices make decisions easier and make things feel more exclusive.

• → Try “This Week’s Drop,” “Only Available for 5 Days,” or “One-Time Edition.”

2 - Drop on a Schedule:

• Repetition builds habit.

• → Launch new items, offers, or content on the same day weekly or monthly. Let people know when to expect it, and turn it into a ritual.

3 - Build the Anticipation Loop:

• Tease what’s coming.

• → Use countdowns, email subject lines, and “what’s coming next” hints to get the dopamine flowing before launch.

4 - Use Scarcity to Encourage Action:

• Scarcity = action.

• → When people know it’s not available all the time, they act faster. “Only this week,” “7-day feature,” “Spots close Sunday”.

✌️ 

 .. tl;dr & captivated wrap-up ..

Crumbl didn’t scale because they had the best cookie. They scaled because, among other things, they created the best anticipation habit.

By limiting options and creating weekly rituals, they turned dessert into dopamine.

And that’s how you get a billion-dollar cookie habit.

People crave newness, but they love ritual. Give them both, and you can sell more too.

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