Crumbl’s $1 billion-a-year cookie empire is famous for oversized cookies and an eyebrow-raising weekly flavor lineup. What is less famous is the rule McGowan says defines his leadership: Crumbl does not open on Sundays. Jason McGowan, Crumbl’s CEO and a Mormon, told Fortune that the company shuts down on Sundays “Not just for religious purposes, but for time to reset,” adding that “Everyone thinks that life is just go, go, go…[but] for me, success isn’t only about building the biggest company-it’s also about creating meaningful moments with those who matter most.”

That line matters because it is not a philosophical aside. McGowan, who is a father of seven, applies the same “reset” logic at work and at home: he puts his email away during family moments, gives in-person conversations his full attention when he visits franchise locations or meets with employees, and emphasizes being present at soccer games and around the dinner table for games of Catan. In a business that now has nearly 1,100 locations and more than 29,000 employees, with doors first opening in northern Utah in 2017 and scaling to that $1 billion in annual revenue, his point is simple: the company can grow without living in sprint mode every day.

For executives, the interesting part is how this “no Sundays” stance plays out in incentives. Retail growth tends to reward uptime, speed, and nonstop marketing cycles. Crumbl’s popularity, including its weekly flavor drops ranging from “Flamin’ Lime Crunch” and “Wild Cherry Blue Razz Slushy” to “Root Beer Float” and “Hawaiian Coconut,” is exactly the kind of operational cadence that usually turns into a compulsion to be open when demand spikes. But McGowan describes a different operating principle: step away to reset, because leadership and life can’t be reduced to constant output.

He also critiques a specific trap he says aspiring founders fall into. Looking back, McGowan told Fortune he believes too many people get consumed with building a business instead of solving a problem for customers. That distinction is a small sentence with big consequences. It reframes the CEO’s job from optimizing activity to optimizing value: “The joy of building something that makes somebody else smile-that’s what drives me,” he said, while also adding that he loves building whether it is “the world’s best cookie or a piece of technology.” In other words, he connects boundary-setting to purpose. If the point is service, then creating space to think and listen may be part of serving well, not a distraction from it.

Crumbl is not the only large U.S. company to close on Sundays. Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby have long done the same, citing founders’ Christian beliefs and the importance of giving employees time to worship, rest, and be with family. McGowan’s twist is that he frames the closure as both spiritual and operational: time to reset, plus an insistence that success is more than building the biggest company. That matters in the broader labor conversation Fortune describes, where employees increasingly push for greater flexibility and even four-day workweeks, and where the idea that success requires constant hustle is being challenged.

This is also a leadership story with roots. McGowan grew up in Alberta, Canada, to a father who worked as a social worker and a mother who was employed at a bank. After the eighth grade, he dropped out of school and entered the workforce. He wanted, he said, to “actually own a restaurant one day,” having worked at a steakhouse and managing the kitchen portion when he was 16. After moving to Utah in 2003, he spent six months sleeping on friends’ floors while teaching himself web development, then cofounding technology startups, including a social network for students at Brigham Young University and a platform for discovering local events. From 2015 to 2017, he served as Ancestry’s director of mobile product before teaming up with Sawyer Hemsley to launch Crumbl.

The second-order executive question is what happens as Crumbl matures and its capital and leadership dynamics change. In May of this year, McGowan announced he and Hemsley are in the process of transitioning away from Crumbl as they find new leadership “to the next level.” Earlier, it was reported early last year that Crumbl was exploring a sale that would have valued the company at nearly $2 billion. When boards and acquirers get involved, priorities can shift fast: maximizing expansion, smoothing revenue volatility, and extending operating schedules. McGowan’s framing gives a potential constraint or template: the company’s definition of success can remain tied to reset time and human presence even when the growth story becomes more institutional.

That human-touch emphasis is especially relevant as the business environment grows more complex. Fortune notes the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and AI reshaping how businesses market, hire, and serve customers. McGowan argues that unpredictability is not new and that curiosity matters: “The future has always been unpredictable,” he said, and he tells his kids, “never be afraid to learn new things.” He also links learning to serving others, saying fundamentals of creating value won’t change even as technology reshapes work. “We’ve got to remember the importance of technology and helping and serving people,” he said, warning that the human element can get “lost in translation,” and adding that “never underestimate the power of human touch.”

For executives watching the same pressures, the stake is straightforward. Crumbl’s scale proves you can build a massive consumer brand while keeping a hard operational boundary and a repeatable leadership practice. But the leadership transition and any sale process raise the same question many boards face: will the new leadership preserve the culture mechanics that make the model work, or will growth incentives quietly rewrite them?