The numbers come first.
Crumbl Cookies generates more than $1 billion in annual revenue, operates nearly 1,100 locations, and employs more than 29,000 people — all since opening its first store in northern Utah in 2017. Cofounder and CEO Jason McGowan built that footprint in under a decade, starting from early mornings mixing dough and late nights scrubbing kitchens alongside cousin and co-founder Sawyer Hemsley.
None of those stores open on Sunday.
'We don't open on Sundays. Not just for religious purposes, but for time to reset,' McGowan, who is Mormon, told Fortune. 'Everyone thinks that life is just go, go, go… for me, success isn't only about building the biggest company — it's also about creating meaningful moments with those who matter most.'
As a father of seven, McGowan puts his email away during family time — sideline soccer games, evenings around the table playing Catan. He applies the same discipline at work: when visiting a franchise location or sitting with employees, he gives those conversations his full attention. 'Work-life balance is extremely important,' he said. 'Being with your families and being present is really important. It is really hard to perfectly balance. I almost don't even like that word.'
Crumbl is not alone in the Sunday closure model. Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby have long followed the same practice, citing their founders' Christian beliefs and the importance of giving employees time to rest and worship.
McGowan's path to the corner office was unconventional. He grew up in Alberta, Canada, dropped out of school after the eighth grade, and was managing the kitchen of a steakhouse at 16. After relocating to Utah in 2003, he spent six months sleeping on friends' floors while teaching himself web development. He went on to co-found several technology startups — including a social network for students at Brigham Young University and a local-events discovery platform — before serving as Ancestry's director of mobile product from 2015 to 2017, then launching Crumbl with Hemsley.
In May of this year, McGowan announced that he and Hemsley are transitioning away from Crumbl as they search for new leadership to take the company 'to the next level.' It was reported early last year that Crumbl was exploring a sale that would have valued the company at nearly $2 billion.
Headwinds are real. The rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and AI's reshaping of marketing, hiring, and customer service have made running a dessert company more complicated. McGowan's answer is curiosity: 'The future has always been unpredictable. Never be afraid to learn new things… it doesn't matter what age you are.'
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CEO Times reads the Crumbl model as a quiet rebuke to the regulatory and cultural pressure that tells employers they must extract maximum hours from workers to compete. McGowan achieved scale — a billion-dollar brand, 29,000 jobs, nearly 1,100 storefronts — by setting a hard boundary on time, trusting franchisees, and focusing on solving a customer problem rather than performing busyness. Free enterprise does not require a seven-day grind; it requires clear incentives, disciplined capital, and leadership that earns loyalty rather than mandating it.
The market has already voted: nearly $2 billion in reported valuation for a cookie company that closes one day a week. That is not a paradox. That is what happens when an owner respects both the balance sheet and the people behind it.
