LINDON, UTAH — Craveworthy Brands, a company that helps emerging and fast-casual restaurant brands expand, has acquired Dirty Dough Cookies, a franchise foodservice business. The acquisition comes after Craveworthy placed a minority stake in Dirty Dough in January.

The acquisition is enabling Dirty Dough to move into the consumer packaged goods (CPG) space.

Dirty Dough, projected to double in size over the next year, is the eleventh company within the Craveworthy portfolio. Other brands owned by the company include Wing It On!, The Budlong Hot Chicken and Genghis Grill.

The cookie chain has more than 55 locations, 10 food trucks, more than 40 stores under construction, and 450 franchises sold.

Dirty Dough recently secured $2 million in funding from private investors from Craveworthy’s network. The funding will enable the company to continue expanding with new locations, enhance product offerings and enhance its operational infrastructure.

“It’s (Dirty Dough) been held together with duct tape (and) I feel like it’s been rapidly growing,” said Bennett Maxwell, founder and former chief executive officer of Dirty Dough who is shifting to director of franchise sales for Craveworthy Brands. “Dirty Dough has outgrown my ability to run it. This grew way quicker than I thought.”

Maxwell will step down from the day-to-day operations of Dirty Dough and focus on sales for Craveworthy.

“My background is sales and I’ve been the one to raise capital for Dirty Dough,” he said. “Craveworthy is continuing to expand and raise capital as well. I’m staying on to do the capital raising and do the franchise sales for all of Craveworthy’s brands.”

Part of that growth is Dirty Dough’s first foray into the CPG space with cookies as its first product — which was a big push from Gregg Majewski, founder and CEO of Craveworthy Brands and current CEO of Dirty Dough since January, Maxwell said.

“We’re in talks with retailers to expand to that side of the market,” he said. “Some chains will be selling Dirty Dough’s brand name while others will white label our products to be sold under the grocery chains own brand.”

Dirty Dough also is in the process of making white label cookies for Craveworthy’s 10 brands.

“Dirty Dough is currently making white label cookies for other QSR (quick-service restaurant) brands and plans to continually expand into more QSR restaurants,” Maxwell said.

For the franchise business, Craveworthy is “slowly pushing Dirty Dough away from (a) cookie shop (and) more to a dessert shop,” Maxwell said.

 “We’re adding edible cookie dough to all of the stores and we’re doing dirty sodas, which you get (by combining) Dr Pepper, coconut cream and raspberry,” Maxwell said.

Maxwell expects approximately 20 stores will soon go live with the beverages.

With Craveworthy taking over Dirty Dough, Maxwell believes using Craveworthy’s platform is “going to be best for the franchises.”

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