Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, March 5th.

Today on Forbes, How Crumble Devoured America.

A pink promotional sign, filthy from standing outside the storefront in Midtown Manhattan,

is shoved against a wall inside a cramped Crumbull bakery, where a crowd of grimacing customers squeeze against each other

in a semblance of a line. For Crumble, a line outside the door has been the norm since Jason McGowan,

who is 44 years old, and Sawyer Hemsley, who is 33, opened the first location in Logan, Utah, in 2017.

Since then, the company, known for its oversized treats,

most notably the 4.25-inch ultra-sugary cookies that are nearly 1,000 calories each, expanded

to 1,071 franchised locations across the United States and Canada. In 2023, Crumble earned $122 million of revenue from franchise royalties.

The system-wide sales of all the franchises is just over $1 billion. McGowan, speaking to Forbes from

Toronto, Canada, where he is meeting with the Jonas Brothers to discuss a brand partnership

for an upcoming

cookie lineup, says, quote, my expectations were pretty low at the very beginning.

We did everything backwards.

We got the building first, then we got the equipment, all before we even had our recipe.

But one thing they got right from the very start was viral marketing.

After all, giant cookies make for amazing Instagram fodder.

Crumble has an impressive 9.8 million followers on TikTok, more than Starbucks, Duncan, and Krispy Kreme combined.

In total, more than 107 million TikTok videos mentioned Crumble, several of which have clocked up

hundreds of thousands of views. In January, reports emerged saying Crumbull was considering a sale

that would value the company at $2 billion. But analysts believe that amount is just a sugar rush.

John Gordon, a restaurant franchise specialist,

...