MIDVALE, Utah — Less than a day after speaking to FOX 13 News about legal troubles due to a lawsuit from the company Crumbl, one of Crave Cookies' stores was broken into.
READ: Popular Utah-based cookie company sues two competitors
The grand opening of Crave’s new store in Draper was held Saturday. But just a few miles away, one of its existing locations was burglarized early in the morning.
The suspect broke in through the drive-thru window around 3:30 a.m.
“When we came in, it was just broken glass spread all inside of the store right there,” said Crave co-founder Trent English, who said the timing came as a shock.
“Obviously, it’s a pretty strong chance it was just someone that needed some extra cash. And if that’s the case, great — I hope he got what he needed,” he said. “But it’s very timely with everything else going on. We had a story break yesterday, we had a Draper grand opening today.”
English says the burglar stole the SD cards out of all security cameras except for one, which was recording to the cloud. Footage from that camera shows a partial view of the trespasser coming through the window.
English said the man was in the store for an hour and 15 minutes. He said the thief stole some point-of-sale equipment that included recipe information, about $1,100 in cash, and a bag of straws. English said the trespasser then left through the back of the store, ripping the door off its hinges.
“My manager was measuring the door frame because we have to get a new one,” English said. “We’ll for sure have to do it today — this isn’t going to keep the door locked tonight.”
Crave owners say in their past three years of business, they’ve never dealt with anything like this before. They said this, on top of the recent lawsuit, has made for a rough couple of days.
“I’m sad — I think it’s the best way to describe it. The thing I’m the most sad about is our staff and the staff of all of the stores," English said. "The whole #UtahCookieWars in general is a fun social media topic, it's fun for people to talk about, but at the end of the day, there’s also real people that are not involved with it that are having to deal with it on a day to day basis."
He added that this isn’t the ideal way for Crave to grow its reputation.
“I don’t think anyone wants to grow a business like this,” he said. “You want the success of your business to be built off of your good merit and things you did, not external drama that caused people to flock to you.”
But either way, Crave workers say they’re not slowing down — they’re moving forward with the goal to be one tough cookie.
“We don’t have any plans to change anything at all,” English said. “Like I mentioned yesterday, I don’t have any ill will towards anyone else. It’s just sad that it’s gotten so out of control.”
