Shadowing Practice: Crumbl: How We Built A Cookie Company That Brings In $1 Billion A Year - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
C1
What do you think about when you think of hype?
189 sentences
If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.
1
What do you think about when you think of hype?
2
Well, what about cookies?
3
I never imagined in my wildest dreams that we would do over a billion dollars in sales.
4
We just thought it was a fun side hustle.
5
With over 980 stores across the U.S and nine international locations,
6
Crumble has quite literally taken over the world.
7
As I get older and as I build this company,
8
I realize more and more everything that we do is really just something that anyone can do.
9
Founded in 2017 by Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley,
10
the brand has figured out its secret formula.
11
Yes, its chocolate chip recipe,
12
but also its recipe for creating buzz.
13
From its weekly rotating menu to its iconic pink box,
14
Crumble has mastered the art of leaving its customers wanting more.
15
In the fashion industry, they really came up with this idea of these drops.
16
And it's an idea that we use in our business,
17
and it does, it creates that hype, it creates that excitement.
18
And it also creates some scarcity because you can only have that cookie for that week.
19
There are three numbers to watch out for in Crumble's story.
20
68,000, the amount that Jason personally invested into starting Crumble.
21
300 million, the amount of cookies Crumble says it sold in 2022.
22
And 1 billion, the amount Crumble brought in in 2022.
23
This is Founder Effect.
24
My name is Jason McGowan.
25
I'm the co-founder and CEO of a cookie company called Crumble.
26
I'm actually originally from Canada.
27
I came here to the United States.
28
I slept on my friend's floor.
29
I just came with an entrepreneurial dream and wanting to build a better life for myself here in America.
30
Prior to starting Crumble, Jason worked in technology at companies like Ancestry.
31
Before Crumble, I was all about technology.
32
I loved building things that were digital.
33
I made that decision to kind of leave the tech world and go into cookies.
34
Really after the first store opened and we started seeing a lot of success.
35
I remember watching as families came in to try these cookies and I thought,
36
my whole career I've been trying to bring people together.
37
Is it possible that the solution is actually not a digital technology,
38
but is it cookies?
39
This is Sawyer Hemsley, co-founder and chief brand officer of Crumble.
40
Sawyer is my wife's cousin.
41
Originally, we didn't know each other that well,
42
but I did business with him before,
43
and I invested into one of his companies,
44
and it didn't work out.
45
Ultimately, he had such good character,
46
I thought, if I ever get the chance to work with this guy,
47
I need to do that.
48
My role here at Crumble Cookies,
49
I have the pleasure of maintaining and developing the cookies every week.
50
And I also am in charge of all the visual,
51
creative branding needs for the concept and company.
52
The four ounces, I think,
53
is the way to go.
54
In 2017, Jason and Sawyer teamed up and came up with the idea of starting a cookie company.
55
With no experience in baking,
56
they started experimenting with hundreds of recipes.
57
I had a full-time job.
58
Sawyer was going to school,
59
so we would kind of get together late at night
60
and whatever time we could to just keep making these cookies and then taste testing them.
61
We would change out one thing,
62
like the milk chocolate chips versus semi-sweet.
63
Which one would be better?
64
And we had no shame.
65
We'd go to gas stations and friends and family,
66
and we'd present two cookies,
67
and we'd say, which one tastes better?
68
It's really good.
69
And every single family member that we had at the time said,
70
you guys are crazy.
71
I think it was about four or five months that it took us to really make one cookie.
72
We did everything backwards that you should do in a business.
73
We thought, let's do a business together.
74
And then we came up with a product.
75
Then we bought the equipment.
76
And then we started making the products.
77
That same year, Jason and Sawyer stumbled across a building in Logan, Utah.
78
This building became the first ever Crumble location.
79
We realized that it was set to be demolished in six months.
80
It was kind of almost an entry because we're like,
81
we have no idea if this business is gonna work.
82
This could be really fun.
83
Maybe this will be the perfect solution for us.
84
And we negotiated it down to around $800 a month.
85
I was like, okay, let's go for it.
86
And so after we negotiated,
87
that's how we got the building.
88
Early on in Crumble, we decided to self-fund it.
89
I invested 68,000 into the business as seed capital to get us started
90
and going everything else from that has been self-funded from the success of the business.
91
Within Crumble's first two years in business,
92
Sawyer and Jason were able to open more than 15 locations.
93
Eventually, we opened up our first franchise location,
94
and this was store number three.
95
As we opened that location,
96
we had a ton of cookies on the menu.
97
The doors were just flooded with people,
98
and lines were just wrapped around the corner.
99
We were desperately trying to keep up with all the flavors,
100
and it was really, really hard.
101
And so customers were getting frustrated,
102
like, I drove all this way I can't get this flavor
103
we sat down we said you know out of every hard
104
time in life there's always an opportunity to think about how
105
can we do this better we came up with the idea what
106
if we just rotate the flavors let's just drop them right
107
on a Sunday where people can't get them they'll be super excited to be talking about what flavors they want
108
and it allows us to continue to build and grow
109
and that's how the rotating menu was born and that just changed everything in our business.
110
Today, Crumble works with over 500 franchise partners worldwide.
111
The franchising was really born out of a need to give a family member one of our locations.
112
And then as friends and family stores started opening,
113
we started seeing more and more success.
114
That's when we realized, oh,
115
wow, this could not be just a Utah thing or a family thing.
116
This could be a really big business.
117
And at that moment, we said we're going to go all in.
118
In October of 2018, Crumble came out with its own in-house app,
119
which helps streamline the customer experience.
120
When you're done eating the cookies,
121
you can rate how the cookies were.
122
Or even before you're done eating the cookies,
123
you can take a picture and send them to us.
124
And so that lets us see across the nation how's the quality in every single store.
125
We can measure that quality,
126
see changes or iterations that we need to do to fix the quality.
127
I think another huge reason for our success is listening to the customer in most businesses
128
when you go into an R&D kitchen you come up with
129
some ideas maybe you have people taste them a little bit
130
and then you launch your product what we do is we
131
actually put them into 50 test store locations throughout the nation
132
and they all taste them and they give us feedback and
133
that feedback gets circulated back to our R&D team
134
and they perfect the product even more and then we launch the product nationwide
135
so really a huge part of our success is leveraging our audience talking to our customers listening to them
136
when they suggest ideas on social media we actually listen.
137
Crumble has also gained major traction online with over 16 million followers across its social media platforms.
138
Shortly after the company launched its rotating menu,
139
the hashtag CrumbleReview went viral on TikTok.
140
Alright, we're at Crumble trying the tres leches.
141
Just the right amount of pumpkin.
142
Just the right amount of frosting.
143
We were heavy in social media right from the beginning.
144
Watching TikTok and all these videos and really leaning into it
145
and highlighting those people that were tasting our cookies and sharing their reviews.
146
And as we did that, it just exploded.
147
With Jason's tech background and Sawyer's marketing prowess,
148
the Cousins grew Crumble from a hometown bakery into a real-world unicorn company that brings in over $1 billion a year.
149
When you start growing a business,
150
there's all kinds of different degrees when you go to different stages of the company.
151
The very beginning, it's me and Sawyer running around,
152
doing the deliveries, answering customer service trying to come up with the next great cookie
153
but as you get bigger
154
and bigger it's a different kind of business is how you
155
can service your franchise partners we got to align all of us
156
so now you have not a few entrepreneurs you have a thousand entrepreneurs
157
so there's tons of ideas and different ways you can move the business
158
and of course as you get bigger and bigger and more
159
and more successful there's all kinds of critics start coming out
160
and our solution is to focus on the positive what customers love our products
161
and how can we surprise and delight and satisfy those customers.
162
Being a CEO or an owner of a business is always hard on mental health
163
because you know at the end of the day you're the last one.
164
You're the one that has to make the decisions if something's not working the buck stops ultimately at the top.
165
So although I'm at work and spending a lot of time and making sure I'm building this business,
166
how I keep grounded is spending time with my family.
167
That's important and even more important than the business.
168
You know I never would have imagined that that Crumble would be a unicorn company.
169
In 2022, we had our first year of billion-dollar yearly system-wide sales,
170
and we have to pinch ourselves.
171
You know, as you scale fast,
172
you're gonna have a lot of successes,
173
and you're gonna have some learnings too.
174
For us, we feel like we've hit that point where we've succeeded in the United States,
175
and we'll scale back our growth,
176
and it will start expanding internationally.
177
So as we go to Canada and to the UK,
178
that's where a lot of our growth will come, is international.
179
Crumble also plans to expand its dessert offerings in the future.
180
In January of 2024, it launched its first non-cookie item called the Cinnamon Square.
181
You know, one of the biggest lessons that I've learned from starting Crumble is just to get started.
182
Whether you don't have a mixer yet or you don't have a recipe for a cookie,
183
you just get started.
184
You start doing things, you start moving.
185
I think action in the early stage is what's really,
186
really important to success, just to move.
187
I hope that people look back at Crumble and say,
188
this is a company that allowed us to create meaningful moments with those who matter most.
189
Thank you.
Download App
AI scoring for every sentence you speak
TRENDING
Popular
Why practice speaking with this video?
Practicing speaking with the video "Crumbl: How We Built A Cookie Company That Brings In $1 Billion A Year" provides an engaging context to enhance your English speaking skills. The lively discussion about entrepreneurship and the cookie business offers a fresh perspective, allowing learners to connect with the material on a personal level. By shadowing the speakers, you can improve not just your pronunciation but also your fluency and comprehension. The video presents real-world dialogue filled with passion and excitement, making it an excellent resource for IELTS speaking practice as well as general English speaking practice.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
During the transcript, several key structures can be identified that are useful for learners:
- Past Simple Tense: The use of past simple, as in "We did over a billion dollars in sales," is crucial for discussing past achievements. It helps you describe significant milestones in your own experiences.
- Present Continuous Tense: The phrase "we are building this company" emphasizes ongoing actions and commitments. Practicing this tense in real-time contexts enhances conversational fluidity.
- Questions for Engagement: The opener “What do you think about when you think of hype?” demonstrates how to frame open-ended questions, a fantastic way to encourage dialogue in spoken English.
- Comparative Structures: Expressions like "better life for myself here in America" can be practiced to articulate aspirations and comparisons effectively.
These grammatical structures not only enhance your speaking skills but also prepare you for real-life conversations.
Common Pronunciation Traps
As you practice shadowing the video, pay attention to these pronunciation challenges:
- Hype: The initial sound can be tricky; ensure you pronounce it with a strong 'h' at the beginning.
- Entrepreneur: This French-derived word often trips up English speakers. Break it down into syllables: “on-tre-pre-neur.”
- Scarcity: The 'scar' part can be emphasized incorrectly. Focus on the correct intonation to improve clarity.
- Delicious: This adjective may be pronounced differently depending on the region; aim for the American pronunciation: “deh-lish-us.”
Recognizing these common pitfalls and practicing them will enhance your effectiveness in English conversations. Utilizing resources like this video on a shadowing site will further boost your confidence as you aim for fluency.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
☕ Buy us a coffee
ShadowingEnglish remains 100% free thanks to your support. Server and AI costs are high — your coffee keeps us going! 🙏