Weber County getting 3 new cookie stores as demand soars, legal fight simmers
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- Sara Boren and her husband, Adam Boren, inside the Chip Cookies location they’ll be opening on Saturday, May 20, 2023, at 1738 W. 2700 North in Pleasant View. The photo was taken Thursday, May 18, 2023.
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- The outside of the Dirty Dough location at 210 12th St. in Ogden, which opens on Friday, May 26, 2023. The photo was taken Thursday, May 18, 2023.
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- The Sodamix at 3008 W. 4000 South in West Haven is pictured Thursday, May 18, 2023.
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- Sara Boren and her husband, Adam Boren, inside the Chip Cookies location they’ll be opening on Saturday, May 20, 2023, at 1738 W. 2700 North in Pleasant View. The photo was taken Thursday, May 18, 2023.
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- The outside of the Dirty Dough location at 210 12th St. in Ogden, which opens on Friday, May 26, 2023. The photo was taken Thursday, May 18, 2023.
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- The Sodamix at 3008 W. 4000 South in West Haven is pictured Thursday, May 18, 2023.
PLEASANT VIEW — As the cookie wars simmer in U.S. District Court, the apparent demand for the treat seems to keep growing and growing.
Three new cookie locales are in the works in Weber County, at least — a Chip Cookies outlet in Pleasant View, a Dirty Dough site in Ogden and a Sodamix shop in West Haven. That’s on top of Crumbl, Crave and Twisted Sugar locations already scattered around the county.
The Chip Cookies location at 1738 W. 2700 North in Pleasant View will be first of the three new outlets to open for business when it holds its grand opening on Saturday from 5-9 p.m. Adam and Sarah Boren of Plain City are launching the franchise, though Sarah Boren will be more directly involved in day-to-day operations.
“I just love them. We used to go to Salt Lake to get them,” she said. Her efforts to get permission to launch a Chip franchise date back three years and the Pleasant View location, her husband said, will be the first franchise. The others are corporately owned and managed.
The Dirty Dough site at 210 12th St. in Ogden is to open May 26 at 10 a.m. with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 11:30 a.m.
Bronson Kaufusi, the former National Football League and Brigham Young University football star, is one of the owners of the Ogden location. He cited Dirty Dough’s cookies as the spur for his interest in the firm — “I love them, they’re delicious” — as well as the company’s messaging.
One of Dirty Dough’s slogans is “It’s what’s inside that counts,” a reference to the filling standard in its cookies and a more metaphysical message about the importance of personal character. “I love that message, especially in the world today where social media can really affect our lives and what’s going on. It really is what’s going on in the inside,” Kaufusi said.
The Sodamix location is taking shape at 3008 W. 4000 South in West Haven. Those involved haven’t put forward an official launch date, but it’s coming, along with new locations in Herriman, Lehi and Spanish Fork, said Kamron Crandall, founder of the first Sodamix location in Blackfoot, Idaho.
Crandall touted the freshness of Sodamix cookies. “We make them fresh every single day. They’re more of a warm, gooey cookie,” he said. Sodamix also offers mixed fountain drinks, known by some as dirty sodas.
The introduction of the new cookie locations comes as a pair of lawsuits filed by Crumbl against competitors — one against Crave, the other against Dirty Dough — wind their way through U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City.
Broadly, Crumbl — the heavyweight in the cookie sector — charges the two competitors with copying some of the larger firm’s marketing, packaging and more. Dirty Dough is seeking permission to file a counterclaim against Crumbl.
For her part, Sarah Boren doesn’t want to get in a legal battle. Chip Cookies isn’t involved in the court fight, now about a year old.
“We just want to make cookies and sell our product. We ain’t trying to fight everyone,” she said.
Indeed, setting aside legal issues, there’s plenty of demand for cookies, as shown by the range of players in the market. “I just think it’s the standard type of American treat,” said Crandall, the Sodamix founder.
Crumbl, according to its website, has 819 locations across the country, including stores in Riverdale and North Ogden. It launched in 2017 in Logan.
Twisted Sugar — launched in Layton in late 2016 — has more than 50 sites, according to its website, including locations in Riverdale, Pleasant View, South Ogden and Roy.
Crave, launched in 2019, has 12 locations, including a Riverdale outlet, according to its website.
Dirty Dough — launched in 2018 in Tempe, Arizona — has 20 locations, according to its website, with 49 more coming. The Ogden location will be Weber County’s first. “We have sold 350+ franchises that will be opening in the next few years,” founder Bennett Maxwell said in an email.
Sodamix, which launched in 2020 in Blackfoot, Idaho, has 12 locations, according to Crandall. Four more are coming to Utah, including the West Haven outlet, four to six are scheduled to soon open in Idaho and one more is planned in Nevada.
Chip has 12 locations, including the Pleasant View site, according to the company’s public relations representative. Adam Boren said the first location opened in 2016 in Provo.
Chip will offer free cookies from 5-9 p.m. during its opening on Saturday.
At its grand opening in Ogden on May 26, Dirty Dough will give away “Golden Tickets” to local youth “going through a hard time,” enabling them to get cookies for a year. Cookies will be given away on the launch date for those who fill out an online form, according to a press release.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story gave the wrong date for Chip’s grand opening. The new Pleasant View store will welcome cookie-lovers beginning Saturday, May 20. Also the number of Chip locations has been corrected to 12.