The Unspoken Rules Of Crumbl Cookies

The Crumbl Four PackPhoto by Laura Kruty

Crumbl Cookies (8395 E. 116th St., Fishers, 317-284-9311) is opening two more locations in the Indianapolis area, at Keystone at the Crossing and on Smith Valley Road in Greenwood. If you see a line outside at a strip mall, chances are you’ve found one—and dozens of people enchanted with the over-the-top flavors and slim pink boxes. Here’s the recipe regulars follow.

• A 20-minute wait outside is normal.
• When the maximum occupancy is six inside the tiny store, does the whole family need to go in?
• Avoid the wait—and cut the line—by ordering ahead on the app. Except at peak times, curbside pickup (actually, delivery to your car) is usually available immediately.
• The aroma of freshly baked cookies is the only reason to step inside. It’s like a contact high.
• Buy a single chocolate chip to eat in your car. It’s served warm, so you almost have no choice.
• Line too long? Locally owned Fat Stack, down the road at the Fishers Test Kitchen, also sells bombastic warm cookies. The wait is usually shorter, but flavors are more limited.
• Three individual cookies costs the same as a four-pack box. You can always freeze extras.
• Just because a cookie looks outrageous topped with frosting and popcorn and sprinkles doesn’t mean you’ll love it. The chilled sugar and chocolate chip, the only flavors always on the menu, are hard to beat.
• The sugar’s thick frosting isn’t overly sweet, but you can order it unfrosted, too.
• There might be 15 workers behind the counter, but don’t talk to them. The whole process is crisply automated.
• Seriously, they don’t know whether your book club will like the banana-bread cookie more than the Nutella mudslide special.
• The mini cookies are only for catering orders.
• Fill a 12-pack gift box with two of everything, and add a $5 cookie cutter, made especially for dividing a Crumbl cookie into four equal pieces.
• According to My Fitness Pal, the signature chilled sugar has 680 calories and 90 grams of carbs. Which means you have to be really choosy about the weeks you indulge in one of the four rotating flavors.
• Cereal as a cookie topping isn’t special. Don’t bite.
• Try not to look at the workers scooping dough out of a massive plastic tub. Kinda kills the magic.
• Follow Crumbl on Instagram at your peril. They are very good at it.