This is How Matthew Jung, the founder of The Last Crumb, built a luxury cookies brand with the help of clever marketing and consumer research.

Early Work on Building Customer Experiences

Matthew and his co-founder, from the beginning, knew that their cookies were delicate and highly delicious. But from the start, they decided to charge $12 per cookie and to sell a box of 12 cookies for $150.

They needed more than a great product.

The co-founder, Derek Jaeger, knew from the beginning the need for marketing and building better customer experiences to scale the brand.

Derek wanted to take the principles used by brands like Rolex, Nike, and others to anticipate their target customers to forget about the price and think about the experience of eating the cookies.

How They Built a Luxury Experience

Derek, in one of the interviews, said they hadn’t spent a dime on marketing. Here’s how they built a luxury experience with $0 marketing.

Product Packaging: The brand confirms that in the early days, they increased spending on making their boxes and cookie packs to ensure consumers love the unboxing experience.

Before I get into the next part, even though they claimed $0 marketing spend, I think they meant paid marketing.

Because they hired Cole Schafer, the founder of HoneyCopy, to help them with email marketing and copywriting.

Email Marketing: Cole and the co-founder Derek worked on crafting an email marketing strategy. The brand on average, hits the customer with more than 5-6 emails on your order. Explaining the brand story, how orders are prepared, etc. To give the customers that premium experience.

The next part Cole worked on, and he mentioned on a podcast that he wanted to visualize the cookies through words with the names of cookies.

Product Naming: Cole worked on naming the cookies with the usage of clever words and messaging to visualize the cookies to the consumers.

With names like “What the F*ck Velvet”, “Not Today Mr. Muffin Man” “50 Cent” (Birthday Cookie), “Stiffler’s Mom”, etc.

With every cookie drop, they have new names shifting the perspective of buyers on how it will taste based on the name.

In recent times, they have launched new-to-new styles of cookies with different names. They are anticipating every drop!

Using Nike’s Sneaker Drop Strategy

The brand has thousands of people on its waiting lists for cookie drops due to its exclusivity.

They use a framework Nike uses to drop sneakers and create exclusivity around the product.

The Last Crumb uses the principles of luxury management, where they turn cheap products into expensive, high-demand products through exclusive distribution strategies like lottery drops.

Where selected customers on a waiting list get the chance to order the product and buy to enjoy the experience.

The reason exclusive distribution strategies work is that they don’t just elevate the customer experience but also help to build the community and provoke internet discussions.

You can find 100s of community discussions around their cookie drop because influencers posted they got the drop, and people discussed, “I also tried but bad luck,” meaning all that exclusivity and a time stamp on getting the cookies created discussions that helped them grow organically faster and better.

The Last Crumb's story shows us that building a luxury brand in any industry isn't about having a shiny product; it's more about how you craft your brand messaging to grow your business.