BLACKSBURG — People lined up in the rain outside of the new Crumbl Cookies in Blacksburg on Friday, waiting to try a treat from the chain’s first location in the area.
Crumbl held a soft opening Thursday, followed by its grand opening Friday, for the new store located at 884 Prices Fork Road. Owner Patrick Gardner, who also owns the Lynchburg location and the soon-to-be location in southwest Roanoke County, fell in love with Crumbl when his son took him to one in Georgia a few years ago. He hopes to open the location in Roanoke this fall, he said.
“I think I’m a very good judge of sweets and stuff,” he said. “It was literally so delicious, and I started talking about it for five years.”
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Patrick Gardner owns the Blacksburg Crumbl location, as well as the Lynchburg location and the Roanoke territory.
Crumbl
Founded in Utah in 2017, Crumbl is a dessert franchise with nearly 1,110 locations across all 50 states, Canada and Puerto Rico, according to the company.
The store’s atmosphere and the excited customers was another thing that appealed to him, he said. He met with the former owner of the Lynchburg store and bought it in August.
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Customers crowd inside of the Crumbl store in Blacksburg during its grand opening Friday.
Gardner said Friday that he’s heard from a lot of customers who have been waiting and are glad the store is finally open. He’s had some satisfied first-time Crumbl customers come through, too, he said.
“The community support is just amazing,” he said. “Everybody’s talking about how excited they are.”
Crumbl offers a rotating menu with new flavors each week. For its opening week, the Blacksburg store served up chocolate chip cookies, rainbow sprinkle sugar cookies, blueberry cheesecake cookies, cookie dough cookies and chocolate cake cookies, as well as tres leches and strawberry cakes. Crumbl announces weekly flavors through social media on Sunday evenings, and current menu options can be found on Crumbl’s website.
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Cookies and cakes on Crumbl’s menu are displayed during the Blacksburg store’s opening week. The rotating menu changes flavors each week.
Prior to the Blacksburg store opening, Crumbl fans in the Roanoke and New River valleys sometimes opted to drive to the franchise’s locations in Lynchburg or Bristol. Alannah Vest and Nicholas Rainsbury of Roanoke are two such fans. Having one in Blacksburg is a lot more convenient, Vest said.
“Sometimes we’ll go to Lynchburg to go to that Crumbl,” Rainsbury said as they waited in line at the Blacksburg store’s grand opening Friday. “We saw this one was opening, and it’s closer. I’m going to Tech next year, so we just wanted to see if it was going to be as good.”
Vest planned to order the blueberry cheesecake cookie. Her favorite from past menus is the raspberry cheesecake cookie, she said, and Rainsbury’s favorite is the strawberry shortcake cookie.
“I love the excitement behind it because, like I said, it really is good,” Gardner said.
Crumbl in Blacksburg is open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and from 8 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.