A Utah-based gourmet cookie chain is dropping another crumb in Iowa. Crumbl Cookies will debut a new location in West Des Moines Friday — the second Crumbl Cookie location in the metro area, with the first opening in Ankeny in January 2021.
Crumbl Cookie has five more locations across Iowa, in Dubuque, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Ames and Sioux City. Nationwide, the chain has over 700 locations in almost every state, from Alaska to Florida.
The main owners of the new Crumbl store, Kegan and Hannah Coon, natives of Utah and Florida respectively, are excited to open up the second location in the Des Moines area.
“[We] look forward to bringing the best cookies to West Des Moines!” they said.
There are four franchise owners including Kegan’s dad, Bart Coon, and Rhett Anderson, a family friend and longtime business partner of about 25 years. Bart Coon and Anderson helped start the West Des Moines Crumbl Cookie after closing one of their businesses in 2021.
“We both had kind of a similar experience with Crumbl, where we came in and tried cookies, and it’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh! These are amazing!'” the senior Coon said.
Every week, there will a new rotation of gourmet flavors to keep the cookies from going stale, a tradition that took Bart by surprise.
“I didn’t know about the rotating schedule. So, I came back like a couple of weeks later, after trying Crumbl for the first time, and I was like, ‘Hey, where’s that that red velvet with the cream cheese frosting?'” Bart said. “I think it was a cinnamon swirl cookie and something else, so I tried those. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, these are really good!’ So I’ve pretty much been an ad advocate and a customer for every week for the past two and a half years.”
The six flavors to kick off new beginnings will be the milk chocolate chip, chocolate crumb featuring OREO, honey bun, raspberry doughnut, the classic pink sugar cookie and Anderson’s favorite flavor, the Cowboy Cookie.
Crumbl Cookie was founded by two cousins, Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley. They opened their first location in Logan, Utah in 2017. During the start of their baking career, Hemsley attended Utah State University, where he and his classmates designed the box that would perfectly package the cookies side-by-side with choices of a four-, six- or 12-pack box.
In 2018, they began changing the flavors more often, and soon it became official: a four-flavor weekly rotation. Crumbl Cookie won Utah’s Best Cookie in 2019 and Best Bakery and Best Gourmet Cookie in 2020.
The chilled pink sugar cookie has been recurring flavor, alongside milk chocolate chip. But in April of 2022, the semi-permanent flavor took a break to give other flavors a chance to shine.
For the grand opening on Friday and Saturday, Crumbl Cookie will be open from 8 a.m. to midnight at 5585 Mills Civic Parkway, so all West Des Moines sweet tooths have a chance to stop in.
Crumbl offers delivery, curbside pickup, catering pickup, digital gift cards, shipping and a taste weekly subscription.
