Does Insomnia Cookies Franchise? No, Not in 2026

No, Insomnia Cookies does not franchise. As of 2026 it remains company-owned, despite passing through two changes in ownership since Krispy Kreme acquired the brand in 2018, and no public evidence shows it has ever sold a franchise to an outside buyer.

FranchiseFeast does not sell franchises and is not paid by any brand named here. Every claim below is sourced to trade press coverage or a company’s own site, cited at the bottom of this page, and where a claim could not be fully verified, that limit is stated plainly rather than smoothed over.

Does Insomnia Cookies franchise?

No. As of 2026, every Insomnia Cookies location operates as a company-owned store, and that has been true through two separate changes in who owns the parent company. No public evidence points to the brand ever having sold a franchise to an outside buyer. There is no franchise application, no franchise fee, and, as far as public trade press and the company’s own site show, no Franchise Disclosure Document that Insomnia Cookies has filed for outside buyers.

Two ownership changes, still no franchising

Insomnia Cookies has changed hands more than once in the last decade, and none of those changes brought franchising with them. Krispy Kreme acquired Insomnia Cookies in 2018. In July 2024, Krispy Kreme sold a majority stake in Insomnia Cookies to Verlinvest and Mistral Equity Partners for $127.4 million, while keeping roughly a 34% stake in the business for itself. Less than a year later, on June 10, 2025, Krispy Kreme sold its remaining stake for $75 million and fully exited the business. As of 2026, that private-equity and existing-shareholder group is Insomnia Cookies’ current owner.

Two ownership changes in roughly twelve months is the point at which you might reasonably expect a franchising announcement. It has not come. Every public signal points to Insomnia Cookies continuing as a company-owned chain under its current owners.

No franchise page exists on Insomnia Cookies’ own site

Check insomniacookies.com directly and you will not find a franchise page. That is true of the main site, the Canada landing page, and the company’s press page, none of them mention franchise opportunities. For a brand that otherwise maintains a fairly thorough web presence, that absence is worth noting on its own. A company actively building toward franchising typically puts a franchising page up well before it starts signing deals, the way MOD Pizza did with its own franchising page. Insomnia Cookies has no such page at all.

The figures you’ll see on listicle sites are not supported by an FDD

Here is the part worth knowing if you searched for this specifically: several listicle and franchise-directory sites publish a specific Insomnia Cookies franchise cost, often citing a range around $240,000 to $530,000. Those figures should not be treated as plausible estimates waiting on confirmation. No public FDD exists for Insomnia Cookies, based on trade press coverage of the brand, so there is no disclosure document those numbers could actually be pulled from. A specific-looking dollar range with no underlying FDD is not a conservative estimate, it is a number with nothing behind it.

That said, this is worth stating carefully rather than as an absolute. The no-FDD claim here is corroborated across trade press coverage of Insomnia Cookies, but it was not checked against a state franchise-registry filing for this article. The honest framing is that no FDD has been filed publicly, not that one has been proven never to exist anywhere.

Cookie and dessert franchise alternatives

If what drew you to Insomnia Cookies is the cookie and late-night dessert format specifically, the picture in that category is uneven, and the difference between the two obvious names is worth more to you than a list would be.

Crumbl runs an active franchising program for its cookie shops, and it is the straightforward option here.

Great American Cookies is the one to look at carefully, and the reason is ownership rather than the brand itself. Its longtime parent, FAT Brands Inc., filed voluntary Chapter 11 petitions on January 26, 2026 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. It did not stay there: on June 16, 2026 a $595 million sale of FAT Brands assets to FBG Bid Co., including Great American Cookies, was completed, so the brand has changed hands out of bankruptcy. Stores were still operating and running national promotions as of mid-June 2026.

What we could not confirm from any primary source is whether Great American Cookies is currently awarding new franchises, as opposed to simply operating the stores it has. There is also a documented dispute in the record. As reported in May 2026, an association of Great American Cookies franchisees formally objected during the bankruptcy to the transfer to a new owner, arguing that damages owed to them had to be addressed first. None of that makes it a bad brand. It does mean the ordinary questions get sharper. Ask who your franchisor entity actually is after the sale, whether your agreement transferred on its original terms, and what the new owner has committed to on support and development, and get those answers from the current FDD rather than from a brand page. Our guide to reading an FDD covers which items carry those answers.

For a wider look at the category, see our ice cream and dessert franchise roundup.

For how we source and verify every figure on this site, see our editorial methodology before you take any franchise-cost figure at face value.