Utah-based cookie company Crumbl is suing two of its competitors: Crave and Dirty Dough.
“We didn’t expect it,” said Crave co-founder Trent English. “We are aware of the existence of Crumbl; Our take on Crave is to keep our noses down and focus on our business.”
In the lawsuit, Crumbl alleges infringement and says both cookie stores are chasing the “valuable goodwill and reputation” and brand identity associated with Crumbl.
“We received…a letter with several different allegations that we didn’t believe were accurate,” Dirty Dough co-owner Wade Rasmussen told Opinion, but we were definitely surprised.”
Crumbl also claims that both brands copied their packaging, but Crave and Dirty Dough both say that’s not the case.
“We couldn’t be more different,” English said. “Crumbl is famous for their pink box, their rectangular box. Ours is black with metallic gold and square – not much confusion, at least from our point of view.”
But one Crumbl franchise owner says he won’t let that happen.
“When I read the comments and it’s like, ‘Big bad America lashing out at the little guy who’s just trying to make ends meet — I mean, that’s me! I’m the little guy,” said John Schefer. “I have a few Crumbl franchise locations, but we were one of the first in Utah. You have a number of entrepreneurs who are out of business or have no chance.”
As for the future of the case, Crave and Dirty Dough say they will keep working… and the publicity is icing on the cake.
“We feel like cookies have been around for a long time,” Rasmussen said. “Cookies can’t really be patented or trademarked so we feel like we haven’t done anything wrong at all and so we’re just going to go ahead and grow the business as best we can.”
“Personally, I have nothing against anyone involved,” English added. “Crumbl is a fantastic company, they’ve done a fantastic thing, they have a fantastic product – as does dirty dough. My hope for the lawsuit is that we can find some kind of peaceful solution and we can all continue working as normal for fair and healthy competition going forward.”