Crumbl Cookies sets opening date for Warner Robins store. A Macon location is on its way
For the Murphys, Crumbl Cookies is a family affair.
Rob and Tasha Murphy, who live in Utah, and their son, Chase, and daughter-in-law, Macy, who live in Perry, own the franchise rights for Crumbl Cookies in Warner Robins, Macon and Columbus.
Chase and Macy are gearing up to open the Warner Robins store at 2907 Watson Blvd., Suite C1, in a couple of weeks. The Warner Robins store is the first Crumbl Cookies location in Middle Georgia.
“We get to try new cookies every week, and I mean, I’m a big sucker for cookies, so I can’t go wrong there,” Chase said of what he likes best about his work. “Any of the Oreo-based are my go to.”
His wife’s favorite cookie is the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
Crumbl Cookies is known for their weekly rotating menu of creative, decorative and delicious gourmet cookies.
Even the names of the cookies are inviting such as snickerdoodle, muddy buddy, biscoff lava, funfetti, coconut lime, chocolate caramel, hazelnut sea salt, oatmeal chocolate chip, rocky road, s’mores, pumpkin pie, caramel popcorn, Hawaiin rainbow cake, pineapple whip, cinnamon swirl and peanut butter brittle.
The Murphy family
Rob grew up in Harris County in the west central part of Georgia.
“We picked this area specifically just because we’re familiar with it,” he said. “We’ve got family out there and knowing that Chase and Macy would be moving out there to run it and it’s just a nice familiar place.”
Chase and Macy, who recently brought home their baby daughter, Addie, their first child, moved to Perry about 10 months ago.
The couple opened the first store in Columbus in May of last year, and they will also open the Macon store for which the lease has been signed for a new construct off Zebulon Road.
Chase ultimately will oversee all three of the family’s stores, with each run by a general manager. He’ll train employees, and he and his father will share administrative duties.
The soft opening of Warner Robins store is set for June 29 with the official grand opening the following day on June 30.
For about 20 years, Rob owned multiple Little Caesars franchise stores with Chase later joining him in that venture.
Rob said he’d been looking for a new opportunity and a fresh brand.
“As a family, my wife and I had been traveling around once a week and grabbing a box of cookies and driving around seeing all our married kids and grandkids and sharing them and we had just grown to love it as a brand and what it was doing for us as a family.”
They’d cut the cookies up to share and try to figure out which of the cookies were their favorites. His favorite is chocolate silk pie.
“It just brought us together,” he said. “It was a reason to get together every week and be in their homes.”
He was also impressed with the look of the stores.
“I just think they have a really welcoming, inviting, open bakery concept that I loved, too,” he said.
Additionally, Rob was influenced by a friend.
“I had a buddy who got in and I was having a conversation with him. He said, ‘You know, everything that you love about it as a consumer, it’s that much more as a franchise,’ and so we started the process.”
The Murphys sold all their Little Caesars stores and jumped in lock, stock and barrel into the world of Crumbl Cookies.
The cookies
Crumbl Cookies boasts more than 250 varieties.
The weekly rotation generally features their two original signature cookies: milk chocolate chip and the chilled pink sugar cookie, or a variation of a signature cookie such as sweet chocolate chip or a specialty sugar cookie.
The remaining four cookies are new each week.
“That’s both good and bad, right?” Rob asked. “Every week, you’re trying something new and falling in love with it, and then the sad part is if you find one you absolutely love, you’re waiting a little while for it to come back around.”
Sometimes the wait is a year, and sometimes, it’s a few months for a cookie to fall back in the rotation. But that’s also part of the fun of it: the anticipation of what’s coming next.
Every so often, Crumbl Cookies offers a mystery cookie and local operators like the Murphys get to pick that cookie — sometimes having a contest among employees to pick the cookie and other times featuring a fan favorite determined by local customers.
“It just creates a positive atmosphere,” Rob said.
The Sunday-night release of the rotating cookie list also creates a buzz among customers.
“Monday morning it can get a little exciting around the restaurant,” Rob said. “We make them all fresh in the store.
“You can see us putting the ingredients together, cracking eggs and doing the things you do in a home kitchen but just on a lot bigger scale or with a lot more variety of recipes.”
The pink box
About as well known as the Crumbl Cookies themselves is the pink box they’re packaged in.
“It’s kind of funny,” Rob said. “We laugh sometimes that people know us for our box as much as they do our cookies.
“As soon as we open up, you’re going to see our pink box floating around town and that’s as much a signature as the cookies that are inside of it.
Operating hours will be 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday. The store number will be 478-217-2922.
This story was originally published June 15, 2023 at 1:13 PM.