Sawyer Hemsley - Cookie Crumbl: Organic Micro Influencing Using Instagram and TikTok

What is the secret recipe for Crumble Cookies' incredible success? Check out our conversation with co-founder and COO, Sawyer Hemsley to get the full scoop on how they built the tech-driven bakery empire, scaled to over 500 stores and turned warm cookies into a viral marketing phenomenon, using branding, scarcity, and innovative technology right about now. We made our stores almost the Apple store of cookies and we integrated technology so that their experience was flawless and smooth. We have in-store, we had delivery, then we also integrated pickup and curbside with COVID, and we build all of our technology in-house. We don't use any third-party software as we have a full team of engineers, and something that really shocks a lot of people is we're not just a bakery or a tech-driven bakery. We own the technology and we can adapt on a dime because we can build tools and resources to make these services easier, not only for our internal staff but for our customers. This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and caching checks? Well, it starts right about now. Hey guys, what's up? I'm Ryan Alford, your host. We're talking cookies today, my friend. One of my favorite subjects ever. And someone that doesn't even eat sweets really that often. If there's a damn cookie on the table, and especially this kind of cookie I'm getting in, it's Sawyer Hemsley, co-founder of Crumble Cookies. What's up, brother? What's up, man? Happy to be here. Thanks for the invite. Why do those cookies taste so damn good? A bunch of love we put in there and lots of sugar, no, I'm just kidding. Honestly, we go through a rigorous process to make these cookies awesome, and we get a lot of customer feedback and we don't put them on the menu until they're perfect. Let's talk about a little bit of that professional journey and what led you to Crumble. Crumble started out as a side hustle. Never anticipated ever being a career. I was in my last year at college, up at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, and just needed something to do on the site. And I was researching things that I could do, and I saw that there were bakeries and cookie concepts out there. But it was at the height of when DoorDash and GrubHub and the delivery services were coming out. I connected with my cousin Jason and I said, we should totally deliver warm cookies to people's doorsteps. And that was the main focus. Aside from culinary and knowing all about food science, we just said, let's just make grandma's mom's recipe and deliver it by using technology so people could stay at home in their pajamas or for girls' night or date night, whatever. The convenience was there less mess and you get warm cookies just as you would making them yourself. So that was really the focus in the early beginning and then everything just unfolded from there. So was it truly a family for the first recipe? Was it chocolate chip cookies that it has to be? That's where it all starts, right? Family recipe, we actually mixed and blended my grandma's, some of Jason's, my cousins, family side, and we just tested. We just tried different brands of chocolate chips, of sugar, of flour, techniques. And again, we didn't know what we were doing in those early days. So we just networked and connected with other food professionals. We watched YouTube, red books, red cookbooks, you name it, we just were hungry to be that entrepreneur and to make something successful and then we just went for it. Well, I'd say things are working out. 500 plus stores and less than four years. You guys just opened five stores while you've been sitting here. We actually opened around five to 12 a week right now. They all franchises? They are. Never anticipated to make this a franchise model, but a lot of friends and family wanted to be involved because they saw the early success and they saw how much energy was behind the cookies. My parents actually approached us and said, can we open a store? Can we be involved? And we said, sure, why don't you open your own store? And so we went through the legal paperwork, set it up as a franchise, and then it started out as my parents, you know, my college roommate, my sister. And then word of mouth just started to spread across Utah and the surrounding stage and now the nation. And we've never actively sold a franchise. Everyone's always come to us to say, we want to be involved when I open a store and I want a business. And that's kind of how I unfold it there. From the get go, the marketing impressed me with you guys. I actually admired you from afar with the marketing. Before I even tried your cookies, I was like, okay, this is a company that knows what they're doing. And then I had the cookies, I was like, holy shit. And this is ball coming together while they're both working so well. Talk to me about the brand. My background is in branding, advertising. My cousin's background is in technology and paid ads together. We have an amazing partnership where our skills help each other. How the marketing started is it all came down to the packaging and the experience of what our product was placed in. And that was our pink boxes. And that's memorable. It's something that's energized. You can connect with that. It's a soft color and attracts our target audience, which is our soccer moms. Naturally, they were bold to our packaging. And from there, we just knew we had to capitalize on Instagram because TikTok wasn't a thing back then. We were really engaged on Instagram. We would run paid ads on Facebook and we would try our best to respond and answer every single message or comment on these two platforms. And it just really helped our advantage to the point where people were just tagging their friends and doing the marketing for us organically. That's really how the marketing started. And then now with time as we've built out our team, we put a lot of paid ads into TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and Pinterest and Twitter. But again, organic for us has been huge. It's been crazy because people love the product. And when you love a product so much, you want to organically promote that to your inner circle. Yeah, but it's a micro-influencing going on. And it's helped when the core of what you're selling, the cookies are so darn good. And the evolving menu of flavors and all that talked to me about that process. We go from family, delicious chocolate chip cookie recipe blended together, testing first number one hit. Then now we've got albums full of them. What was that process in journey of flavor discovery? One thing I wanted to mention to you about the pink box before we move on is it's Instagramable. People want to take pictures of it and sometimes people just show up so they can say that they went to Crumble and they post about it, which is awesome. We opened that first franchise. We finally started listening to some of our customers and they said we want more flavors, we want more cookies or more options. We had a couple of cookies that just included some mix-ins, nothing special. And we tried to do like eight or nine at a time and we just got burnt out. We couldn't do it. We couldn't keep up. We were constantly battling for inventory levels. People would come and get it upset. So we put our heads together and we said we have to adapt or we're going to die. We have to innovate because our volume was just too high. We said let's just choose four unique flavors every week and let's rotate those out. So one, it keeps the energy there, but also the scarcity of those flavors that people want again and again. That's how we started and then we always had our chocolate chip and chilled sugar making a total of six cookies and that model has just been awesome for us because it's like Christmas every Sunday night when we post about our new flavors because we're getting a return rate of once to two times weekly from our customers. So it's been great. Talk to me about the flavor ideas. It used to just be soccer moms. Now it ranges from children to senior citizens and anything in between. The thing that we found more successful is what flavors are relatable to our consumers. So you think back to your childhood. Did you grow up eating cinnamon rolls or cosmic brownies or did you love the icy flavors from the gas station? What can you pull a story from and put into a cookie? We look at cakes, cupcakes, hard candies, candy bars, drinks. You name it. We're going to try to make it into a cookie and a damn good cookie at that. So people will buy it. Anything can be mean into a cookie and we pull our inspiration from everywhere. I know that's pretty vague but really we're always looking for new ideas and we actually accept customer feedback constantly on what they want to see. They're the ones that keep us in business and our communication with our customers since the very beginning like I mentioned before is still just as good. We respond and comment and communicate with them on a regular basis day today. How many cookie flavors do we go through that never see the light of day? Is it more or less than you would think? It's actually less because we've now developed a testing program where they have to meet a set of guidelines and then they go out to about 25 to 30 testing sites across the nation and then we utilize data. Customers can come into these testing sites, purchase the cookies, get a card from our bakers, fill out a cute survey and let us know would they promote that cookie? Do they like the taste, the texture, the appearance? And if that cookie tanks, it's never going on the menu. It's going straight to the graveyard or it's getting redeveloped and we're trying again. There's a few that have actually passed that have just not done very well in the market and on the menu. One of those being bubble gum. We thought that would be a stellar hit with children and people that like bubble gum ice cream and things like that but it just did not do well and so it's in the graveyard and it's not coming back out. Double gum and cookies come on now. What's weird is those cookies actually drive the most engagement on social media. Yeah. So I see that as an eye catching tool for people to be like wait what are they doing or what did they make into a cookie? It just keeps us top of mind sometimes as well. Talk to me about the retail approach. I'd love to hear the typical mix of deliveries or order sales versus like in store. I'm just fascinated by all those kind of details. Most people are too because such a unique experience going to the store. You got 30 people are working. This sounds like they have cookies in here. We actually saw a trend where people wanted the experience of coming in the store smelling the aroma of the cookies, watching us crack the eggs and pour the flour and ball the dough and dress the toppings on the cookies and that started to become even bigger than delivery. We capitalized on that and we said how can we even make this more of a show a stage where people can bring their kids or people that are visiting from out of town and make it an event and experience. We made our stores almost the Apple store of cookies and we integrated technology so that their experience was flawless and smooth. We have in store we had delivery then we also integrated pickup and curbside with COVID and we build all of our technology in house. We don't use any third party software as we have a full team of engineers and something that really shocks a lot of people is we're not just a bakery or a tech-driven bakery. We own the technology and we can adapt on a dime because we can build tools and resources to make these services easier not only for our internal staff but for our customers. Lots going on we have catering as well involved there and then some of our stores even have drive-throughs. The biggest hardship for us is just keeping cookies in stock really because we have cookies flying out the windows the doors from the counter it's crazy sometimes. I can vouch for that I'm in there watching that thing go down. You talk about the engineering and doing everything yourselves. Did your success allow you to then do everything custom? Would y'all have always been custom anyway or did the money and the success facilitate that approach? I would say from the gig hoe without a question it was custom from the beginning Jason my cousin was a product developer he worked in tech he worked for Nintendo Facebook we actually brought our first engineer on from Facebook recently worked at Snapchat prior to that time and we just knew we were going to integrate technology because not a whole lot of food and beverage concepts were utilizing technology we wanted to use it as a powerhouse to make our concept unique and different. We always live by the motto what's going to be different better and special and we felt technology was going to be another powerhouse aside from our rotating menu our unique novelty flavors and just the overall concept in general from the get co customized and then we started recruiting people from all of these other tech giants to build out a team what's been the biggest pain points or learning as you've gone on this journey you're a young guy but you've been successful you had a great idea great execution talk about the entrepreneurial journey is it all perfect all the time right oh it's not like building the brand is not kicks and giggles it's hard it's lonely there's a lot of days that you're just working your guts out and you're you're making it work and you have a lot of people counting on you you have to make it work something that's been really tricky is I've been young and so it's hard to earn respect in an industry where people are older than I am it's important for me to be knowledgeable and be educated on the product I'm not afraid to get in there and work the kitchen and and know every aspect of the concept because I need to be able to speak towards that being young in the industry and being a leader there that's a hardship second thing is having so many locations and youthful staff and employees consistency is key you can't build a brand if one store is different than the other from California to North Carolina it's got to be the same you got to be the mean guy sometimes you got to put your foot down and say we've got to have you improve or you got to issue more policy or training or say no we talked about some of the beauties of the concept of new flavors so you've got new things that could be the content what's been the growth the strategy and the content on both Instagram and TikTok what started out with Instagram I go back to that organic micro influencing because people would tag people when the rotating menu would be launched every Sunday and they would say hey so and so we need to go get these cookies or let's drive to this nearest location that's an hour to away and then it started to build height slowly in these circles and then as we started to open up more franchises people would tag people in the communities in which these stores would open and then this huge giant web and maze of inter tagging on Instagram really helped hype up the brand on Instagram and it was amazing and our weekly drop was our most highly engaged piece of content we could ever had put out there TikTok is a whole nother story we jumped on right at the right time when it was hot I remember it being last year during March and we called the TikTok boom of 2021 we weren't afraid to go after it we weren't afraid to spend money on high-level video and photography and we started posting we started using ads we started connecting with our TikTok reps asking what's the best strategy here and we started posting on a regular basis not just once a week or twice a week we posted every day it just expanded like crazy and our stores just flood in our volume just went up even more our socials we've been semi lucky because people just love the product again and they come back to it and they just want to know what we're doing social media is about compounding interest and when you have a product they get shared you compound the interest because of all of the shared value of those inputs and things that happen into snowballs and then you're weekly menu the new items you have some things that allow you and then you guys haven't been afraid to what I call borrowed interest from things like stranger things one of your posts like playing with stuff that has interest their circles this big and your circles this big and you pull from their share to yours because you borrow that interest from them I see you guys testing and doing a lot of stuff for your social media which is super smart I would also add that in partnerships we've been very lucky to partner with big brands like Oreo Twix sour patch we're doing a minions week for the children so partnerships have been huge for us and they've actually started to come to us now and we're not going to them anymore how do I keep up with you Sawyer if they want to follow along let's plug the social channels for you and of course the company all things crumble is just crumble cookies TikTok Pinterest Twitter Instagram Facebook you name it at crumble if you want to follow my journey I'm regularly posting on LinkedIn a business advice business fails just Sawyer Hemsley and I'm also an avid tiktoker trying to be cool you tick-tock Sawyer Hemsley and Instagram Sawyer Hemsley if you want some insider scoop into crumble or just business strategy for me final question what's your favorite cookie this is a hard one I love so many of the cookies and I know that's cliche but I had to nail down one right now that I'm absolutely loving and it is the Kentucky butter cake I promise you I love the butter notes I think it's simple yet intriguing I've seen that I've got it sounds delicious I could never seem to fall in that week we've never had a butter oh yeah dude are you kidding me you gotta try when it comes out we're gonna make a raspberry butter cake which has oh my god I think a lot of people will actually love it the butter cake is one of our most popular cookies and this raspberry on top is gonna take it to the next level it's been a pleasure man I really appreciate the time I know they will continue to buy lots of damn cookies and I keep up with you really appreciate you coming on thanks for the invite best of luck with everything hey guys you know where to find us you know where I'm at I'm at Ryan Alfred on all the platform kick-talk Instagram you know where see you next time this has been right about now with Ryan Alfred a radcast network production visit Ryan is right calm for full audio and video versions of the show order one choir about sponsorship opportunities 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