Crazy good cookie brands keep popping up in India, and I saw the same thing on my recent trip to the UK. It made me wonder: are cookies making a comeback, or is this new? I'm a huge fan of Ben's Cookies (a white chocolate and macadamia kind of guy), but what about everyone else? Does everyone love cookies?
The short answer is both, and America is where you can see it happen.
People have eaten small sweet baked things for at least 3,500 years. What comes in waves is the cookie shop: a counter selling one big, soft cookie, warm from the oven. America had its first wave in the malls of the late 1970s. The one now reaching India and the UK started in Utah in 2017, and this year, in America, it has started to crack.
We mapped 1,725 shops from nine cookie chains, counted the bakeries in the Census and tracked the price of a pound of cookies since 1980.
Eight moments, from a tomb painting to a Massachusetts inn.
c. 1450 BC
c. AD 350
AD 533
1600s
1796
1908
1922
1938The same kind of cookie, from Ruth Wakefield's kitchen in 1938 to a Crumbl box today. Each one is drawn with its area matching its calories.
1938: our estimate from her printed recipe. 1980s and 2000s: US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Portion Distortion. Today's bag: Nestlé Toll House recipe, 60 cookies. Crumbl: 180 calories a serving, four servings a cookie, via CSPI. The official US serving of a cookie is 30 grams.
For most of the 2010s America had between 6,000 and 7,000 retail bakeries: shops that bake what they sell. Then the number jumped, from 7,221 in 2019 to 9,219 in 2023. Utah, where Crumbl started, added 57%. North Carolina nearly doubled.
Census Bureau, County Business Patterns, NAICS 311811 Retail bakeries, establishments with paid staff, mid-March of each year. 2024 is not out yet.
We took the store lists from nine cookie chains' own websites on 2 November 2026. Each dot is a shop. Tap a chain to see where it is.
Store finders of Crumbl, Insomnia Cookies, Tiff's Treats, Crave, Dirty Dough, Levain, Cookie Plug, Schmackary's and Last Crumb, read 2 Nov 2026. Great American Cookies and Mrs. Fields block automated access, so they are not shown. Three Crumbls in Puerto Rico are counted but sit off this map. Tiff's Treats delivery kitchens list no address, so they are placed at the centre of their ZIP code. Closed Crumbl shops: archived copies of Crumbl's store list, June 2024 to October 2026. Universities: federal IPEDS list. Population: Census 2025 estimates.
Crumbl opened in Logan, Utah, in 2017 with a pink box and a menu that changed every week, so there was always a new cookie to post about. Each dot is one of its shops.
2017 to 2025: Crumbl's franchise disclosure documents, via Restaurant Business, Franchise Times and QSR. 2026: our count from Crumbl's store list, 1,035 open on 2 November, 98 closed this year.
Sales per Crumbl shop fell from $1.84 million in 2022 to $1.14 million in 2025. In August 2026 Crumbl's sales were 70% below August 2024, according to an internal document seen by Restaurant Business. By our count, 98 Crumbl shops have closed this year, most of them opened in 2022 and 2023 at the height of the boom. Chip City, a New York chain, closed all 52 of its shops between January and October.
Crumbl shops on its store list in 2025 or early 2026 and gone by 2 November 2026, by state. Ten states with the most closures.
A new menu every week only works while people keep coming back to see it, and some weeks flopped: a Flamin' Lime Crunch cookie, a Tangy Mango with Tajín. Cookies also cost more. Weight-loss drugs may matter too: a Cornell study found household grocery spending fell 5.3% in the six months after someone started taking them.
Insomnia Cookies is still opening shops. It started in a University of Pennsylvania dorm in 2003, delivers warm cookies late at night and has 370 shops, with more on the way in the UK.
The government has tracked the price of a pound of chocolate chip cookies in American supermarkets every month since 1980. It went from $1.58 to $5.18. In today's money, though, a pound cost $6.36 in 1980. The real price fell to $4.33 by 2007, stayed under $5 for most of the 2010s, then jumped to $5.59 in 2023. At $5.18 this year, a pound still costs less than it did in 1980.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, average price, cookies, chocolate chip, per lb (APU0000702421), yearly averages; 2026 is January to September. 2026 dollars use the consumer price index for all items. October 2025 is missing because of the government shutdown.
In America, almost. In YouGov's ratings of dishes this autumn, 86% of Americans said they like chocolate chip cookies, the most-liked dish of any kind. Only 2% dislike them.
YouGov Ratings, US dishes, third quarter of 2026: share of people who have heard of the dish and like it.
As for white chocolate and macadamia, none of the polls we found ask about it. Every flavour poll we did find was won by chocolate chip.
The cookie never left. Americans like chocolate chip cookies more than any other dish, and people were baking small sweet cakes 3,500 years ago. What comes and goes is the cookie shop. The wave now reaching India and the UK is the one that started in Utah in 2017, and in America it is already shrinking.
The stall Helge Rubinstein opened in Oxford's Covered Market in 1984 is still selling cookies. Ben's tried America three times, in Utah, New York and Texas, and has no shops there today.
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