The Cookie Plug in California

thecookieplug.com · Bakery & Desserts · the Q3 2026 release

The Cookie Plug has 7 locations in California.

Every figure in this block is measured inside California. Nothing in it is a rate.

The Cookie Plug: local figures for California.
Figure	Value	What it measures~~California only~~
Locations in California	7	Records the US location index holds for The Cookie Plug inside California right now — a snapshot at the Q3 2026 release, not a change over time.
Rank among The Cookie Plug's states	this is the only state with a published page, and a rank of 1 of 1 states nothing	By location count, among the states where this brand clears the publication floor.
States with a published The Cookie Plug page	1	States where the brand has at least 3 locations. Smaller states exist in the index and are not published.
Locations across those states	7	The sum of the state table below. Lower than the national count, which includes states under the floor.
California's share of that footprint	100.0%	A share of the published states only. Both halves are the same measure, so this is not a growth rate.
Verified openings in California	0	A DIFFERENT measure from the count above: openings detected inside the tracked window, not stores standing today.
Cities with verified openings in California	0	Distinct cities after folding spelling variants. See the city table.

The two counts above are measured differently and are both correct. Locations in California is a presence snapshot of what operates there now; verified openings counts what opened inside the tracked window. A chain that already had 40 locations in California and opened none reads 0 openings.
It is a count of OPENINGS, not of stores. Openings are diffs against the previous release, so a mature operator that finished its California buildout before the window opened shows a large location count and no openings at all.

Where The Cookie Plug has opened in California

Cities with verified openings recorded for The Cookie Plug in California. The count beside each city is its openings — not its total The Cookie Plug locations.

The Cookie Plug verified openings by city in California, largest first.
City~~modal spelling in the index~~	Verified openings~~inside California~~	Share of California openings	Spellings folded~~raw variants in the index~~
The Cookie Plug has no opening records in California inside the tracked window. It operates there — the count above is a presence snapshot — but nothing opened while the window was watching.

0 cities with verified openings in California.
Spellings are folded the same way the city URLs are built, so "St. Louis" and "St Louis" are one city rather than two. The most frequent raw spelling wins the label; "Spellings folded" is how many the index actually holds.
Cities are NOT linked: a city page is published only where at least three brands clear the floor, so a link from here would frequently point at a page that does not exist.

The Cookie Plug in every state we publish

The brand's whole published footprint, largest first. California is highlighted in place.

The Cookie Plug locations by state.
Rank	State	Locations~~presence snapshot~~	Share of footprint~~published states only~~
1	California — this page	7	100.0%

A state appears here only with at least 3 locations. States below the floor are in the index but have no page, so this total is smaller than the national count.
Locations are a presence snapshot at the Q3 2026 release. They are not openings and they are not a change.

The Cookie Plug nationwide

Context for the local figures above. None of it is a California number.

The Cookie Plug: national figures, for context only.
Figure	Value~~United States~~	Basis
US locations	7	At the latest vintage, Q3 2026.
US locations at the window start	17	The first tracked vintage, Q4 2024.
Net new over the window	-10	The difference between the two counts above. A count movement, not a count of openings.
Growth over the window	withheld: this brand's index coverage is still maturing — see the note under this table	Percentage change in the count between the first and latest vintages, nationwide.
Growth as a multiple	withheld: this brand's index coverage is still maturing — see the note under this table	The same movement stated as a multiple of the starting count.
Growth against its category	withheld: this brand's index coverage is still maturing — see the note under this table	The brand's percentage change minus its category's, so a rising tide is subtracted out.
Mean quarterly change	+0.8	Average count movement per vintage step. The default ranking key on the hub.
Verified openings in the window	0	Individually dated location records new to the index inside the window, nationwide.
Openings pace, latest step	0	Verified openings per 91 days over the most recent vintage step.
Openings pace, prior step	0	The same measure one step earlier.
Direction	steady	Accelerating, steady or slowing, decided on the two paces at the precision they are printed.
Latest pace as a share of the base	a single quarter's share has nothing to be read against, so it prints only alongside the prior quarter's	The latest pace over the store count at that step's start vintage.
Prior pace as a share of the base	withheld with the prior step, above	The same measure one step earlier.
Reported openings pace, latest	0	The server's own pre-aggregated pace. Shown because the page ranks on the series-derived figure above and the two must agree.
Reported openings pace, prior	0	The same, one step earlier.
Largest single step's share of the change	—	One release carrying most of the movement is the signature of a data-coverage artifact rather than of openings.
Steps that moved the same direction	29%	A real buildout moves one way most quarters. This and the row above are the credibility filter.
Passes the credibility filter	no	Largest step at or under half the movement, most steps in one direction, and net new above zero.
Cleared to print a percentage	no	Whether the index's coverage of this brand is mature enough for a rate to mean anything.
Openings corroborated by coverage	—	Share of the openings that agree with the count series over the same step.
Records matching the brand's own website	71%	Share of index records whose website resolves to this domain.
Records sharing an address with another operator	71%	High values mean host locations, sibling banners or shared kitchens rather than the chain's own leases.
Entity class	chain	Anything other than a chain is not published as a brand page in this state tier.
Category	Dining and Drinking > Bakery	The index's own category path for this brand.
Segment	Bakery & Desserts	The published grouping the category rolls up to.
Match name in the index	the cookie plug	The string the location index matches records against. Rarely the display name.
Display name	The Cookie Plug	As published. Some domains carry a read-time repair where the index's most frequent name is a department's.
Domain	thecookieplug.com	The key every table on this tier is joined on.
Tracked window	8 vintages, Q4 2024 to Q3 2026	How many quarterly releases this brand has been measured across.
Vintage stamps	2024-11-19\|2024-12-03\|2025-03-06\|2025-06-10\|2025-09-09\|2025-12-16\|2026-03-18\|2026-07-09	Every release these figures were built from, oldest first, pipe-separated. It is a LIST of dates rather than one date, which is why nothing on this page prints it as a timestamp.

Every figure in this block is NATIONAL. It is identical on all 1 of The Cookie Plug's state pages and is not apportioned to California — dividing a national percentage into a state is not a fact about anything, which is why no California growth rate is published anywhere on this page.
Openings are individually dated records new to the index; net new is the difference between two count snapshots. The two answer different questions and rarely match.
This brand's index coverage is still maturing, so growth percentages are withheld — the counts shown are individually verified store openings.

The Cookie Plug's count by quarter, nationwide

The national count series behind the figures above. Both readings of it — the raw count and the indexed one — are columns here.

The Cookie Plug: US locations at each tracked vintage.
Quarter	Vintage date	US locations	Indexed~~100 = first vintage~~	Change vs prior
Q4 2024	2024-11-19	17	100	—
Q4 2024	2024-12-03	17	100	0
Q1 2025	2025-03-06	16	94	-1
Q2 2025	2025-06-10	12	71	-4
Q3 2025	2025-09-09	10	59	-2
Q4 2025	2025-12-16	10	59	0
Q1 2026	2026-03-18	9	53	-1
Q3 2026	2026-07-09	7	41	-2

Indexed values rebase the series to 100 at the first vintage with a non-zero count. A brand first measured at zero enters at 0 and reaches 100 one step later.
National figures. Not apportioned to any state.

The Cookie Plug's openings by vintage step, nationwide

Each row is the difference between two consecutive releases, so there is one fewer step than there are quarters above.

The Cookie Plug: verified openings per vintage step, with the real step length each pace is normalised by.
Step ends	Quarter	Step length~~days~~	Batch-suspect~~share of the step~~
Dec 3, 2024	Q4 2024	14	0%
Mar 6, 2025	Q1 2025	93	0%
Jun 10, 2025	Q2 2025	96	0%
Sep 9, 2025	Q3 2025	91	0%
Dec 16, 2025	Q4 2025	98	0%
Mar 18, 2026	Q1 2026	92	0%
Jul 9, 2026	Q3 2026	113	0%

Steps are irregular, so a pace is openings divided by the step's real length and multiplied by 91 days rather than a raw quarterly count.
A batch-suspect share above half means the records were created on an index-wide vendor ingest day or bunched into a few days of the step; it impeaches the timing, not the existence of the stores.
National figures. Not apportioned to any state.