Dirty Dough gourmet cookie company plans 3 Indianapolis-area stores

The “Brookie” sold by Dirty Dough combines fudge inside a chocolate chip cookie that’s inside a brownie cookie, topped with caramel sauce. (Photo provided by Dirty Dough)

A company that specializes in stuffed cookies, two-layer cookies and three-layer cookies plans to open shops in Indianapolis, Fishers and Carmel by March.

Utah-based Dirty Dough sells treats such as the “Brookie,” which combines fudge inside a chocolate chip cookie that’s inside a brownie cookie, topped with caramel sauce.

Dirty Dough shops are scheduled to open at Glendale Town Center, 6159 N. Keystone Ave., and in the Fishers Marketplace retail center near the intersection of 131st Street and State Road 37. The Carmel location is to be announced.

Wade Rasmussen, Dirty Dough’s co-owner, said the company wants to expand from its current roster of seven stores in two states (Utah and Arizona) to 120 stores in more than 20 states by the end of 2023. Although the Indiana stores are corporate-owned, the company founded in 2018 is selling franchises in other states.

Rasmussen, a Utah native who worked in pest-control sales in Indianapolis during the summers of 2015 through 2020, said Dirty Dough is primed for growth because unbaked cookies are manufactured at a central production facility in Utah and then shipped to stores.

“It’s the most simple food model in the world,” Rasmussen said. “(Store employees) take the cookie dough packs out of the freezer, put them in the oven and then hand cookies to the customer.”

Selling gourmet cookies is big business for another Utah-based company, Crumbl Cookies, which launched in 2017 and now operates more than 650 stores in 47 states.

In May, Crumbl filed trademark infringement lawsuits against two companies, Dirty Dough and Crave Cookies, claiming that its branding and business model were swiped by competitors.

Dirty Dough denied the allegations and coined the hashtag #UtahCookieWars to bring attention to the dispute.

“Dirty Dough has not infringed on any of Crumbl’s intellectual property and Crumbl’s claims are without merit,” said Dirty Dough’s legal representative, Jason Sanders, in a July statement. “It is clear the complaint’s real purpose of this suit is to stifle competition and impede the free market.”

Indiana may become a new front for the “cookie wars.” Crumbl operates shops in a dozen Indiana communities.

Dirty Dough recently hired Jill Summerhays, founder of the Maui Wowi Hawaiian coffee and smoothies chain, to be the company’s CEO.

Rasmussen said Dirty Dough has an advantage when compared to cookie stores that assemble the raw ingredients of flour, sugar and butter on site.

“We’ve eliminated all of the labor-intensive steps that lead up to having those cookie dough balls ready,” he said.

A balling machine modified from its original purpose of making Chinese dumplings allows Dirty Dough to make 60 cookie dough balls per minute, Rasmussen said.

“It’s a much more streamlined model and a much more profitable model,” he said. “Because it eliminates so much of the labor in the store, our profit margins and our break-even points are significantly better than most of our competition.”