Sweet Loren’s: Loren Castle. How A Recipe Makeover Built a National Cookie Brand

Loren Castle started baking cookies after surviving cancer in her early twenties. Five years later, Sweet Loren’s refrigerated cookie dough was generating just $350,000 a year. But instead of giving up, she listened to customers, and reinvented the dough without gluten, dairy, eggs or nuts. That transformation turned a small regional business into a national brand sold in more than 30,000 stores. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN How surviving cancer at 22 inspired Loren to rethink her career and develop a passion for healthier food. What working at New York’s Levain Bakery taught her about the enormous appeal—and profitability—of cookies. Why Loren decided to sell ready-made cookie dough instead of cookies Why she was totally unprepared for her first Whole Foods meeting—but went anyway Why raising her first $1 million from friends and family was much harder than she expected. Why hundreds of customer requests revealed an unmet need for allergen-free cookie dough. Why growing slowly may have saved the company. Why Loren isn't rushing to sell Sweet Loren’s TIMESTAMPS: 8:40 – After her mother's leukemia diagnosis, Loren is diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma at 22. 13:12 – Watching people line up for cookies at Levain Bakery: “I think this is America’s favorite food.” 14:54 – Selling baked goods at Smorgasburg: customers ask if they can just buy the dough 26:52 – Just as Whole Foods agrees to carry her cookie dough, Loren loses her mom 37:41 – What happens after Sweet Loren’s gets on The Today Show: “The whole country is excited by this.” 50:19 – Loren reconsiders her recipes after customers ask for dough without gluten, dairy, eggs. 56:24 – Loren takes the leap: discontinuing her original product line and going allergen-free for all. 1:05:41 – From one Whole Foods to 30,000 stores–the company expands nationally. 1:07:46 – After years of struggle, Loren explains why she wants to keep building the company instead of pursuing an exit. This episode was produced by Carla Esteves, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant. Our audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley. Follow How I Built This: Instagram → @howibuiltthis https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis/ X → @HowIBuiltThis https://x.com/howibuiltthis Facebook → How I Built This https://www.facebook.com/howibuiltthis Follow Guy Raz: Instagram → @guy.raz https://www.instagram.com/guy.raz/ Youtube →guy_raz https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNSfrxNEmCruNtjIzxCBHjg X → @guyraz https://x.com/guyraz Substack →https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/guyraz.substack.com__;!! Iwwt! RZoD751oWzUzoqqdJiqaoL6HdJfRHDUO1TKvYJ424d3Udn7-Pw9Nj6nEsauh9zcgEvLjUEc$guyraz.substack.com http://guyraz.substack.com Website →https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/guyraz.substack.com__;!! Iwwt! RZoD751oWzUzoqqdJiqaoL6HdJfRHDUO1TKvYJ424d3Udn7-Pw9Nj6nEsauh9zcgEvLjUEc$guyraz.com http://guyraz.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 4:26Speaker 01

  I'm talking every day in my apartment. I would just test different types of potato starch and tapioca starch, you know, in different proportions of it. So honestly, it was just so much playing around. I tried to hire food scientists to help me because I thought that that would be the easy solve. And the food always tasted like a science project.

• 4:56Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 5:08Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Lauren Castle made cookie dough taste good even without gluten, dairy, and eggs, and then grew that into Sweet Lawrence, a brand that sold in more than 30,000 stores.

• 5:26Guy Raz?

  A lot of founders think that to build a great brand, you've got to come up with a totally original idea. But the fact is, a lot of really great products and the brands built around them are simply more creative versions of what's already out there in the market. For example, Graza olive oil. The founders realized most people have no idea how to choose olive oil. So they made it simple. Three oils for three different uses. Two for cooking and one for drizzling on salad or tomatoes. They packaged it up in a fun, squeezy bottle, and it's become a national brand in less than four years. In fact, we really should do an episode on it. Anyway, today's story is precisely about taking on a category

• 6:11Guy Raz?

  that wasn't very innovative: refrigerated cookie dough. And for most of the past few decades, it was dominated, and probably still is, by tubes of Nestle Toll House. So when Lauren Castle decided to start selling her own brand of refrigerated cookie dough, she saw an opportunity. Not only to offer up an alternative to the usual brands, but eventually to make it gluten, allergen, and dairy-free and vegan, which sounds like a buzzkill for a cookie. I mean, you kind of want all those things in a cookie, right? But what if you could take all of those things out? The gluten, the dairy, the allergens, and actually make the cookie dough taste good? That was how, over many, many years,

• 6:54Guy Raz?

  Lauren was able to grow Sweet Lawrence into a national brand that's now sold in more than 30,000 stores across the country. And the thing is, Lauren used to sell cookie dough that wasn't gluten and allergen-free. But when she launched it as an option, it quickly outsold all her other cookies. So she pivoted and turned Sweet Lawrence into a brand entirely aligned with consumers looking for an allergen-free cookie that didn't taste like cardboard. Lauren managed to build her business despite dealing with some pretty big personal challenges. As a teenager, her mom was diagnosed with cancer, and later Lauren was diagnosed as well. And it was while battling cancer herself

• 7:38Guy Raz?

  that she developed an interest in healthy eating. But before all that happened, Lauren Castle grew up in New York City in the 90s. Her dad was an entrepreneur, and her mom was a busy attorney.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  My mother was a founding partner of a law firm, Jacobia Myers.

• 7:55Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  And I just remember her stretching herself thin because she was trying to make business events out at night or dinners with friends. But then also, you know, we were her priority as the kids.

• 8:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I remember. I mean, everybody remembers that law firm because they did TV ads. It was like one of the early TV ads.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  It was the first law firm to advertise nationally. And she was the face of the brand in a lot of the commercials.

• 8:20Guy Raz?

  Really?

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so, you know, and she was, you know, one of the early female partners of law firms. So she was pretty groundbreaking.

• 8:28Guy Raz?

  Wow, Jacobia Myers, that's wild.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Wild.

• 8:31Guy Raz?

  It's in a Beastie Boys song.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. It made it to pop culture.

• 8:35Guy Raz?

  I got more suits than Jacobia Myers.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. We used to sing that all the time.

• 8:41Guy Raz?

  So in some ways, I mean, I mean, obviously, your life doesn't begin, you know, at age 14, but it really, a profound change happens in your life. Because I understand that your mom was diagnosed with cancer when you were 14. Is that right?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was a really crazy year because it was my first year of high school, and my parents got divorced. And then later that year, my mom found out that she had a type of leukemia.

• 9:10Guy Raz?

  This all happened in, I mean, what a year.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  One year. It was a crazy year. And I really started to feel like an adult from that day on.

• 9:19Guy Raz?

  And how, I mean, what was it? What was your mom's battle like? I mean, was it, was it sort of periods where things seemed totally fine and normal, and she seemed healthy, and periods where she was just in bed and getting treatment? And, I mean?

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, she, she was so fearless and from the outside seemed so healthy and vibrant. And I think anyone that knew her would say that, so. She had over a decade battle trying to, you know, moments when she seemed really healthy, but it just, it kept coming back.

• 9:53Guy Raz?

  Wow. And, and you during that time went to, went to high school and, and college, you went to USC, I think.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:00Guy Raz?

  But you, your mom was in New York, so you would probably go back and forth, I imagine.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:06Guy Raz?

  And, and I guess you, you're done, you graduate and you are, I think the plan was to, to end up living back in California, right? When you were 22?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. I loved California and I was like, let me go back home for the summer. My, my younger sister's gonna start applying to colleges. I can do college visiting with her. I can check in on my mom. And then after the summer, I'll figure out my life and what I'm gonna do. So I went to New York for the summer and I, I woke up one morning and the lymph nodes in my neck were so swollen that I just knew something was off.

• 10:40Guy Raz?

  But like more swollen than, than it would be if you had the flu or, or some other infection?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yep. So my mom looks at my lymph nodes and I think as someone who was dealing with cancer was like, anything with lymph nodes was really scary to her. So I went to her doctor and he said, you either have nothing at all or Hodgkin's lymphoma. So they did a biopsy through my neck and, you know, the doctor called my mom a couple of days later and the doctor said, we have to start chemo immediately. I was diagnosed with stage two Hodgkin's lymphoma.

• 11:12Guy Raz?

  Wow. All right. First question I, I, I think most people want to ask is, is that, I mean, what's the prognosis for a 22 year old with stage two Hodgkin's?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  So stage two has a really high chance of being cured. My doctor was, felt very positive about it, but he just wanted to start the treatment immediately. So it didn't become stage three or stage four, when it gets harder and harder to reverse. And so, you know, he looked at me and he said, we're, we're gonna get through this. And I decided to believe that, you know, that, that is what I held on to.

• 11:50Guy Raz?

  I mean, I, I, I can't imagine what it felt like for you. I can't imagine what it felt like for your mom, who was in the middle of her own battle and now her child is diagnosed with cancer.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  I know. I'm sure my mom was like, how much more can I handle? Like, why me? Like, how can you watch your kid go through that? And, you know, she really was my sole support. So I think that's why I tried to pick myself up as much as possible because otherwise it was just too hard, I think, for both my mom and I.

• 12:29Guy Raz?

  I mean, you get this diagnosis, you're about to go to California. Clearly that's not gonna happen. You're not moving to California. I mean, was that clear to you that you, that that, that plan was out the window?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Unfortunately, I actually, I had bought a one-way ticket. When I went to the doctor for the first time, he was like, no, no, no, you're canceling that plane ticket. And so when I got the diagnosis, I mean, I, I really, for the first time in my life, felt what it felt like to be depressed and just kind of hopeless and scared. Like, I just remember the first couple of treatments were really, really hard on my body. I was dizzy. My appetite was off, you know, I just did not feel great. And then I'd finally start feeling better, but then you'd have your next treatment every two weeks. So then all of a sudden you'd feel not good again. And, you know, this cycle would happen. And

• 13:25Speaker 01

  so started seeing a therapist and just in one of the sessions, something clicked where, you know, I was kind of complaining about the, when will I ever make it back to Los Angeles? And what if this haunts me my whole life? And, and she, she looked at me and said, don't you see how it actually could be such a positive? Do you see how you could actually get through this? And this could make you stronger, more empathetic, appreciate life more, feel stronger than ever before. And something in my brain just clicked when I heard that. And I was like, you're right.

• 14:07Guy Raz?

  All right. So I think 2007, you complete the treatment for cancer. And at this point, are you gonna go back to, you gonna go to California? You gonna follow through with your plan?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was originally, my plan was, okay, the second I'm done with treatment, I'm gonna go right back to California. But I just couldn't. Like, my mom wasn't getting better. And after the treatment was done, you know, my doctor looked at me and was like, okay, like, go be normal now. You're cleared. You know, we'll do checkups every six months, but no big deal.

• 14:40Guy Raz?

  He was saying, all right, you're 22, 23, go get a job.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:44Guy Raz?

  Okay. So you don't go to California. You stay in New York City. And I read that, that you worked at a bunch of different jobs that, that I guess didn't quite pan out. Like, but, but there was one job that you, I guess you did like, which was at Levain, the very famous bakery in New York City. So what were you doing there? Were you a baker?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  No, I, I actually was like the salesperson in front, dealing with all the customers. And this is when they had the one location.

• 15:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  And I just, I saw people line up down the block for fresh, warm cookies. And, you know, I saw the joy and the excitement and like the highlight of people's day was getting this delicious fresh cookie. And so I could not believe how people would travel internationally, you know, from all different parts of the city, every age group, you know, for fresh cookies. And then what I also thought was so interesting is that out of all the products that were sold in the bakery, you know, they do breads and muffins and brioche and cookies were the number one, you know, product sold and the most profitable. And there was just something, you know, that was really interesting to me about that. I was like, I think this is America's favorite food.

• 15:56Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  But when I was going through treatment, I decided to take my health very seriously. And so I started to study nutrition and take cooking classes. And there was all these books about vegan baking or healing benefits of coconut oil, which again, it wasn't a thing back then. Like, this was so niche.

• 16:18Guy Raz?

  Nobody talked about inflammation. No.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I became obsessed because I started to buy all of these ingredients that were just not mainstream yet, you know, falling in love with whole grain, healthier flours, like throwing out the white bleached all-purpose flour that's in most cookies. And, you know, it's still a cookie, but make it feel like it's made of real whole ingredients.

• 16:44Guy Raz?

  So, all right. So you're, I guess at a certain point, you were, you started to make, bake cookies and sell them at a farmer's market?

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So every time I'd come home, I'd wanna bake. And I think baking became kind of my therapy. Like, it was just calming, it's happy. And I actually was so intellectually stimulated by how difficult it was to replace a classic chocolate chip cookie recipe with these more natural ingredients.

• 17:17Guy Raz?

  So no, no unbleached flour, no flour, no wheat flour?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  No, no wheat flour, no eggs, no dairy, you know, no corn syrup, nothing artificial.

• 17:28Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  And I was just determined because I am obsessed with a warm chocolate chip cookie. So I kept coming home at night and playing with recipes and really studying and understanding, how does stevia work in a recipe? How does monk fruit? How does cane sugar? How do they all interact with one another? And I have a younger sister who, you know, I would, I would like leave a cookie plate out with like four different types of cookies that I'd made that day and give her like a chart to fill out. I just kept testing them on friends and family until I started to see, like my sister say, this is the best cookie I've ever had. And seeing the reaction of friends and family over and over again, be like, I love what you're doing. Can I buy some from you? You should really do this.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Like, this is cool. This is different. And I entered a baking contest and I won.

• 18:22Guy Raz?

  This was like a local baking contest that you?

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. In just in New York City, a small baking contest. And the judge was a famous pastry chef and she came up to me and said, you need to do something with this.

• 18:34Guy Raz?

  And, and that was the catalyst for you to, to try and sell them at a farmer's market?

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Yep. So Smorgasburg, that was a famous one in Brooklyn. And that was in like the heyday of it. So it was actually like really fun. It was super busy.

• 18:47Guy Raz?

  That was where Oprah used to like have her people go and scour and discover things.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. And there was a lot of cool products. So I got a booth there.

• 18:56Guy Raz?

  And how would you, how would you advertise it in the farmer's market? Would you, would you? Because it wasn't what it is now yet, but like, what would you say?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  So by then, it was called Sweet Lauren's. This was the early days where like, it's not like it was branded and crisp and really professional.

• 19:12Guy Raz?

  But like when people passed the booth, it would say like, organic cookies, natural cookies.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  All natural.

• 19:18Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And actually, you know, I had other things besides cookies there. I had these muffins, I had brownies. It was mostly cookies, but I had a couple of different things because, again, I just wanted the market to tell me like, what would you buy? What are you missing in the market? What's interesting to you?

• 19:37Guy Raz?

  And I mean, what, how was the response? I mean, was it like, what, what did you, what did you find?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  So the response was overwhelmingly positive. Like, people would line up. I would always sell out. People would say to me, I love this concept. Can you sell this in grocery stores? Can, can I just buy the dough from you? Because then later at home, I can make them warm and fresh with my kids. And cookies were always the things that sold out first. And, you know, people asking to buy the dough was really interesting to me because then I started to like, look into supermarkets. And, you know, Whole Foods was my local supermarket in New York City. And I was like, there's no packaged product I would be excited to buy and bake off in my own home.

• 20:26Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you have this burgeoning farmer's market business. Meantime, it's just you, you're baking cookies, go to the farmer's market. And are you still working other jobs to supplement your income?

• 20:40Speaker 01

  I'm teaching yoga on the side. Because that was the only thing that was super flexible. And, and I think I had a short stint at farmer's markets. It was only probably, you know, a couple of months because I hated it. Like, it was, it was too hard as a one woman show to pull off. Like, it is so labor intensive. You know, you have the whole table and like, bringing all the products and standing on your feet and, and testing the product. And what if it rains? Or it just was too unpredictable. But it was like a great place to try the product, sample the product and get the confidence. And honestly, here, that consumers wanted something in a grocery store.

• 21:19Guy Raz?

  And I guess around this time, you take a, you get accepted into this program. Like, I guess it's a, maybe a New York City nonprofit, or it's a community program. It's like a two-year free business school education.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Yes, so it was part of Columbia Business School. And so I did that for two years and I, I started to write a business plan for Sweet Lauren's to figure out, what kind of product would I launch? Was it going to be shelf-stable, ready-to-eat cookies? Was it cookie dough? Was it, was a bakery a better idea?

• 21:53Guy Raz?

  Right, because you're making cookies. So you would think, all right, let me just open a bakery like Levant.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then I started to put the numbers behind that and was like, wait a minute, like, you have to pay rent day one. And New York City is so expensive. And on a Sunday, when, you know, the faucet breaks, I'm the one who's going to have to come and fix it. And I just don't want that lifestyle. And I also wanted to reach as many people as possible. So opening, you know, one store in New York City, just, I just felt like I was only going to reach the neighborhood.

• 22:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right, so you're, you're doing this program and you are trying to figure out, okay, what does this look like? Right?

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:35Guy Raz?

  What is the business going to look like? And I guess in, in this class, or you would, you, you, you know, you're talking about what you're doing. And you had a classmate who actually worked at, at, at a Whole Foods. Like, was it just like a stock person or checkout person at Whole Foods in New York City?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I would bring cookies every week because I was always recipe testing something new. And this guy in my class named Corey worked in Whole Foods in the overnight shift. You know, that was his side gig to make money, you know, because he wanted to open up a bike shop. And so I said to Corey one day, how does one even get into Whole Foods? And of course, he wasn't management or a buyer, but he called me the next day and said, Lauren, I just got you a meeting with the head grocery buyer at the Columbus Circle Whole Foods, which was my local Whole Foods. I think it's also the busiest Whole Foods in New York City.

• 23:29Guy Raz?

  I was recently there, it's very busy.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  It's, you know, it's New York City, it's non-stop. And so I was like, what? I could not believe that he got this meeting, like, like, not in a good way. My website said coming soon, because again, I'm still ideating what my business plan even is.

• 23:46Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  You know? And I was so pissed off because I was like, I am not prepared.

• 23:54Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, while Lauren starts to ride the subway every day with her toaster oven in tow. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 24:09Guy Raz?

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• 25:24Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2011 and Lauren's friend Corey has arranged for her to meet the buyer at the busiest Whole Foods in New York City. It's a meeting, by the way, that Lauren did not request and is not prepared for.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  I didn't want to come off as unprofessional because like, I didn't even know how to present.

• 25:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Sweet Lauren's. But Corey pushed me to take the meeting, to tell the story, to bring samples.

• 25:53Guy Raz?

  And you were going to meet this guy. I mean, and again, I should just point out, 2011, this time, you could still, this is pre-Amazon, before Amazon bought Whole Foods. It was still common for Whole Foods buyers to buy from an individual store. Like, you could go to a store and if, and they liked local products, they still do. And a manager buyer for the store can just make a decision and say, yeah, we'll, we'll buy the product.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And so I took the meeting and we really hit it off. He had kids and he was like, I think what everyone loves about your product is like, the melting chocolate and the warm and the gooey. And the, you know, I think cookie dough is brilliant because everyone can have the best quality in their own home whenever they want. And there's white space.

• 26:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah, it's interesting because I'm thinking 2011, what were the big cookie dough brands? Nestle and Pillsbury, probably.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  That, that's really it. And those aren't really natural products.

• 26:56Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  And honestly, that's what got me more excited too, because that was the biggest request was, can I just buy like a cookie dough from you so I can make this later? So he says, I like this, but I have to meet with the rest of our team and I have to have them taste the product and I'll call you tomorrow.

• 27:13Guy Raz?

  Okay. By the way, he had not tasted your, I know this sounds weird. He hadn't, you hadn't given him raw dough. You would only give him a baked cookie.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  No, good point. Because I had never packaged raw dough before.

• 27:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  So I, I just made cookie. I woke up very early. I'd made all those cookies from scratch. So he was tasting freshly made that morning.

• 27:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  He called me the next day. I remember I was just walking on the street and he was like, Lauren, my team is so excited. We've never tasted something this good. How soon can we get this as cookie dough? And I just started to cry.

• 27:46Guy Raz?

  Wow. So Whole Foods wants to sell your cookie dough, which is great, right? But, but I want to, I just want to pause here for a second because at the same time, I think this was also a very tough period for you, right? I mean, on the family front, your, your mom was still fighting cancer and I think it was getting worse.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yes, so my mom, you know, the, the chemo treatments weren't working anymore. And she was 65 years old. Her doctor recommended a stem cell transplant. And so we got a donor and for the first year, nothing really changed. And so then, after the first year, they decided to do another infusion.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  And.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  She had just had a terrible reaction to that. And a couple of weeks later, she was in the ICU. And she ended up passing away.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  She actually passed away right after I verbally got into Whole Foods, but before we actually had cookie dough on shelf. And because she'd been fighting it for, you know, over a decade, we almost felt like she was invincible. Like, oh, she'll, she'll keep figuring out how to get past this. So it did come as a shock. You know, at any age, I think it's just so hard to lose a parent, especially when you're close to them. And my mom really was my best friend.

• 29:19Guy Raz?

  Did the, the focus on having to get this done? And, and, and figuring this out, did it, in a sense, give you something to really just distract you?

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  So I think between not having an emotional safety net and really wanting to distract myself with something happy and positive and something that was growing and exciting. Sweet Lawrence did both of that. I just felt like this is, this is my road out of here.

• 29:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting how I, and, you know, we've had stories on the show in which people talk about just the clarity that you get when you're, you have to focus. And it, in many ways, a gift when, when you're dealing with trauma, because it focuses your brain. And it, it, I guess it's a, it's a double edged sword. It doesn't allow you to process entirely, but also it, it allows you to not become immobilized by the grief.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think I, I, you know, I've done a lot of therapy. I've tried to process this my whole life. But I think I'm so grateful to Sweet Lawrence because I could process my own grief of getting sick, losing my mother into, into something that could then be a real benefit.

• 30:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And, and so meanwhile, I mean, you managed to get your first order of cookie dough into the Whole Foods in New York. And, and when the buyer agreed to carry it, did he give you like an amount of how much they were going to take? Like a certain number of cases or whatever?

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Nothing quite yet, but he was like, we're going to start small. We're just going to buy for this store. You know, so I think when people hear like, oh, you get into Whole Foods, it's going to be billions of orders overnight. It's like, it was the opposite.

• 31:18Guy Raz?

  It's like eight units a week.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Exactly. It was really tiny amounts. So I was making these in my kitchen. And so when he placed an order, that's when I started to research factories. Because there were plenty of people that like rented out commercial kitchens and made their own product in commercial kitchens. But I think from the very beginning, I realized like, I am a one woman show. There's no way I'm going to be able to make the product, sell the product, sample the product, demo the product. And like, I have to find a factory that can make this. And then I, I'll have free hands to kind of do everything else.

• 31:53Guy Raz?

  Right. And, and so, I mean, is that hard to do? I mean, there, there, there gotta be plenty of factories that do, you know, co-manufacturing for cookies and baking. And I mean, this is slightly different, but I mean, was it that challenging to find a place?

• 32:11Speaker 01

  It was so challenging. I mean, I, I think things are easier today. But a lot of factories, you know, kind of keep themselves secretive or they're not good at marketing. And so it was so hard. I, I just started calling dozens and dozens of places. You know, I found some factories that were very large scale. So they're like, I'll run your cookie dough recipe, but you know, you have to produce 10,000 pounds at a time. And I, there was just no way I was going to say yes to that yet. You know, I was in one store. I wasn't going to do a huge batch. And then all of a sudden, something's wrong with the batch and we have to throw the whole thing out and I'm losing thousands of dollars. Like, I couldn't even afford that. So I found this tiny factory in upstate New York.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  I didn't have a car, so I took the bus like two and a half hours up to it. They'd never made cookie dough before, but they had mixers. So that's all you need.

• 33:04Guy Raz?

  They were prepared to do cookie dough and to package it for you?

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yes. And keep it cold. That was the most challenging part was when you were in only one store to begin with. It's not like some big distributor was going to take Sweet Lawrence on and deliver, as you said, you know, eight units to a Whole Foods. So I actually hired a guy who worked at the factory to put it in a cooler in his trunk and deliver it into the city.

• 33:37Guy Raz?

  Okay, I got it. And, and here's another question, which is, your story, your personal story was really compelling. I mean, you had been diagnosed with stage two, you know, cancer. You, you beat it and it changed how you thought about food and it inspired this cookie brand. There's two thoughts around this, right? On the one hand, it's cool. You could tell that story in the back of the packaging. I mean, that was the story of Andrew Abraham and Organe, right? The other side is, you know, it might be too much about that rather than about the product, right? And then people might be thinking, oh, is this going to be like for, for, for cancer awareness or for charity? Or does the money, you know what I mean? Like, people might start, start wondering, oh, is it, did the proceeds go?

• 34:22Guy Raz?

  Is it like Newman's Own? I don't know. Did you, were these thoughts going through your head at all?

• 34:27Speaker 01

  All, all the time. I, in the early days, really actually didn't like talking about the story because first of all, it would bring me back to, you know, a challenging.

• 34:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah, re-traumatize you.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Retraumatizing.

• 34:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  And also I didn't think it was that appetizing. I was like, why are we talking about this? We're talking about food and.

• 34:49Guy Raz?

  Cancer and food, sweets.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  You know, make people happy and bring joy to people.

• 34:54Guy Raz?

  Read in the back of the package, like, this is a bummer.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Right, and people are crying. I, you know, I did not want that.

• 34:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  But I will say, I, you know, I just listened to my gut and studied people and, and my interactions. And I just saw over and over and over again, how me being vulnerable and telling that story actually became so humanizing for the product. And it made people want to support me. It made people understand that there was something different about how I've chosen each of these ingredients.

• 35:29Guy Raz?

  So you put the story from the get go on the back of the package?

• 35:33Speaker 01

  I did, from the get go. A photo of me, signature and a little story of it, you know, a couple of sentences.

• 35:39Guy Raz?

  Okay. And, and we're going to get to what, how it evolved over time. But initially, it wasn't like vegan or, or dairy free or wheat free or, right?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  So it was, the original recipe was, had wheat, but it was low, it was low gluten and it was dairy free.

• 35:57Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  But it did have egg. And that first year that I was in, that one Whole Foods, I demoed the product. Like, I was that girl with a table every week. And I would bring a, a rolling suitcase with a toaster oven in it on the subway to the Whole Foods, plug it into the aisle and stand in that aisle for three to four hours, demoing fresh cookies.

• 36:22Guy Raz?

  You know, I think a lot of people forget, you can actually bake cookies in your toaster oven. It's not just for shrinky dinks.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 36:30Guy Raz?

  And it's not the easy bake oven.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:32Guy Raz?

  And you can actually bake your cookies and you can make a roasted chicken, small chicken in a toaster oven.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  I use my toaster oven more than I use my regular oven.

• 36:40Guy Raz?

  Do you really?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  I mean, oh my gosh, yeah.

• 36:42Guy Raz?

  All right, okay. So you're, you're doing that, you're baking them at Whole Foods in a toaster oven.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:47Guy Raz?

  Uh, which is great because it takes like, what, 15 minutes to bake?

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Less, yeah, like 10, 12 minutes to bake. And people are obsessed with the warm smell.

• 36:56Guy Raz?

  Of course, getting free chunk of cookie.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Freshly made chocolate chip cookies.

• 37:00Guy Raz?

  That's a, that's a good thing to get. So it's interesting also that you were in that Whole Foods, right? Because location does matter. And I think one could make the argument that like, oh, you want to be in a Whole Foods in like San Francisco or Los Angeles, which is where food trends begin in the United States or like Boulder, you know? But actually, it, to me, this makes a lot of sense. And, and in some ways, you were really lucky. You were in New York City at that Columbus Circle Whole Foods because it is so busy. You have a lot of single, young professionals. And this is like a great product for a young, single professional because you could, if you had a toaster oven and you wanted one cookie, you could do that.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, exactly. I was so grateful it was so busy because I for sure was meeting a thousand people a day. And that was like incredible feedback. And New Yorkers are picky. They're honest. You know, it was a really good group to be around. If like, I could make a New Yorker appreciate this cookie who has access to a lot of high quality food.

• 38:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  You know, I think we could be successful everywhere else.

• 38:09Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you are. In the Whole Foods at Columbus Circle. And then how soon after, before they're like, hey, we want you in a few more stores?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  So they never said that. I had to say that of, hey, I want to get into more stores. So after a couple of months, I got the confidence that we were selling enough every week. I knew that consumers loved it and I could handle demoing at a couple of other stores. So I went to a couple of other Whole Foods nearby. Then the business got into Fresh Direct. Got in the Northeast, it started to take off a little bit. And there was this excitement. And then I got on the Today Show.

• 38:51Guy Raz?

  This is early on, in like 2011, 12?

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Early on. We were really only sold in the Northeast in supermarkets. But I got on the Today Show, Hoda Kapi became a huge fan. She came in and to the Whole Foods when I was demoing once and got samples.

• 39:07Guy Raz?

  And you told her your story?

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:09Guy Raz?

  And she had already been a breast cancer survivor at that point, I think, right?

• 39:13Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. And she said to me, when you're ready, I'm going to put you on the show. Just email me.

• 39:19Guy Raz?

  Amazing. So that must have been a huge, I mean, this is pre TikTok and Instagram. So being on Today Show 2011, awesome. But you're only available in a few Whole Foods in New York City.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  So we started shipping from our website.

• 39:35Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  So that you could buy at sweetlauren.com and get it anywhere in the country. And so I get on the show and I literally could not use my phone for 24 hours because of the amount of inbound calls from people across the country that had questions, that wanted Sweet Lauren sold at their local store. And I just, my gut was like, the whole country's excited about this. Like, you gotta keep going. There's a much bigger picture here.

• 40:03Guy Raz?

  Okay, here's my question. How are you financing the business? I mean, you're getting into more Whole Foods, you're in Fresh Direct, you got a website, you're shipping. I don't think the shipping is too complicated because you could just put dry ice packs in there, do two-day shipping and it's going to be cold. But still, you need money to do this. And there's no way, unless I'm wrong, the sale of Sweet Lauren's is enough to finance the business.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  So I used up my savings. And then I started a small friends and family round, just friends and family that saw I was working hard or loved Sweet Lauren's,

• 40:41Speaker 01

  would just put in enough so that I could figure out how to have enough cash flow just to support the growth of it.

• 40:49Guy Raz?

  How much did you raise?

• 40:52Speaker 01

  So I raised about a million dollars. And I tried to hold on to that cash as much as possible. So I hired very slowly. I never spent big money on fancy marketing events or a fancy office. Like, I just tried to keep things as lean as possible.

• 41:09Guy Raz?

  Do you think that being on Today Show and being in a couple of Whole Foods made it easier for you to raise that money? Or do you think it was friends and family who just really liked you and liked your family and believed in you?

• 41:22Speaker 01

  No, friends and, I was amazed how difficult it was to raise from anyone, especially friends and family. I mean, in my head, I was like,

• 41:30Guy Raz?

  Hey, it's me.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  My mother just passed away.

• 41:33Guy Raz?

  I need help.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  You know me, I'm trustworthy. You know how hard I'm working. I couldn't believe how hard it was. And so I just had to take meeting after meeting to find people that loved entrepreneurs and that believed in me or wanted to see me succeed. And it's part of why I just, I wanted to figure out how to get to profitability as fast as possible so that I wouldn't have to raise again.

• 41:57Guy Raz?

  This is now, we're getting into like 2012, 2013. And I think by this point, you're in, what, more than 10 Whole Foods?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm in, I'm probably in 300 stores.

• 42:11Guy Raz?

  But this is interesting because this is now, 2013 is, I think the economy is really more or less out of the, emerging from the low point of the financial crisis and its aftermath. And money is starting to flow again, especially to CPG, direct-to-consumer brands. I mean, this is like when Warby Parker and Tom's Shoes and all these, Harry's Razors are raising lots of money.

• 42:42Guy Raz?

  What's going to define your brand over the next, I guess, seven, eight years, from 2013 to really to 2020, 2019, is actually quite slow growth. Like, it wasn't, you weren't gonna go 30, 100, 300% next year, 500% growth. Like, it was going to be more incremental.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  I think I was learning how to run a business for the first time.

• 43:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  This is obviously my first business.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  I think I was biting off as much as I could handle. And I didn't hire a big enough team to really support more than like Northeast growth. And so it was a hard couple of years because I knew I had something special, but I just felt like I was a little early to the market where I was ready to go. But I don't think the rest of the country was absolutely ready to support a better-for-you brand in our category.

• 43:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, I think I first saw your brand probably only in like 2022. And I just assumed it was a brand-new product, even though it had been around since 2011, I now know. But in many ways, I actually really like that. I like that incremental, slow method, even if you didn't necessarily like that. Because a lot of people in that, in your space, were hyperscaling. Some of those brands don't exist anymore. You're lucky that you didn't actually grow that fast because it didn't, it meant that you didn't have to dial for dollars every six months.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  No, and I appreciate that because I do actually think it took longer, but it felt sustainable. I also didn't know what I didn't know. There were so many aspects that I had to wrap my head around. I lived in that state of anxiety and stress for all those early years. It was so overwhelming to me. You know when you have like a hard day and you work so hard and your head actually hurts? That happened to me every day. You know, we were growing, but it wasn't this incredible growth where everyone was like, oh, you've now made it. And so I had to do all the deep believing in Sweet Lauren's.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  You know, my accountant, I remember saying to me, like, are you sure this business is worth it?

• 45:12Guy Raz?

  I mean, I'm assuming you were paying yourself through the angel money you raised. But do you remember what you were paying yourself? You had to pay rent, you had to pay your food and costs?

• 45:25Speaker 01

  I think I paid myself $85,000 for those first couple of years. I tried to take as little as possible, even though I wanted a fancier lifestyle. I just, I looked at every dollar like it was worth something. And so I lived in a studio apartment in New York City. And I raised my bed like three feet off the ground so I could keep huge containers of all my ingredients under my bed. And my friends also, you know, just graduated from college, they're getting great jobs. They're now a couple of years into their great jobs. Like, they're getting raises, they're getting paid more. They're definitely out partying more than I am.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  And I'm pretty attached to this business. And kind of whatever it needed, I was going to give it.

• 46:20Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, why Lauren decides to raise the bar even higher by creating cookie dough without gluten, nuts, soy, dairy, or eggs. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 46:49Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the mid 2010s and Lauren is figuring out how to grow her business without going out of business. And one of the things she's struggling with is finding a reliable factory to make the cookie dough.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  I now was at like my second factory and all of a sudden, one day I got a letter in the mail from this factory saying, within three months, we'd like you to close up business with us and be out of our facility. I remember being just so shocked, so upset, so pissed off. I couldn't believe they couldn't like have a phone call with me or like bring me into their, you know, have a professional meeting. Like they know this is my livelihood. They know this is a small business. They know this is a really big deal. I asked them for six months and they said, okay, we'll let you stay six months. I mean, they, they really didn't specialize in cookie dough. They did it better than my first factory, but they weren't doing this at a national scale. And so it actually was a great force

• 47:49Speaker 01

  function because it made me go back to the drawing board to find a bigger factory that like really specialized in cookie dough and the right packaging and figure out how to, you know, really create something that could finally get me out of the Northeast and get me nationwide.

• 48:06Guy Raz?

  So during this sort of time, from the time you get in the first Columbus Circle, Whole Foods, until like 2016, this is like a five-year period of mainly regional growth, right? Mainly like Northeast before you would go national. But it was like, by year five, let's say, or year four, do you remember what your annual sales were?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  By year five, we were probably 350,000.

• 48:37Guy Raz?

  A year in sales?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  A year in sales.

• 48:39Guy Raz?

  So you were tiny.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  We were tiny.

• 48:41Guy Raz?

  Wow. I was thinking you were going to say like seven, eight million dollars. I mean, again-

• 48:45Speaker 01

  No, under a million.

• 48:46Guy Raz?

  I really, I, this is, I mean, this is very refreshing because everybody wants to just hyperscale and people, and legitimately, people are worried, especially in CPG, that if you're not fast enough and you've got a successful product that's noticed, somebody's going to just replicate it and, and have a better marketing plan and more money and, and beat you. But actually, I think people worry about that too much. I mean, this is an example, a good example of that because if all of a sudden, you know, Nestle wasn't just making Toll House dough, but was making birthday cake cookies and, you know, like replicating what you were doing, I'm not sure it would work.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  No, I, I don't think it would. I, I learned that a lot in the first couple of years. People would say, you have to go faster. Like someone could just create their own recipe and come in and copy you and, you know, even the factory that you've left, you know, could like use your recipe. And, and after being in it for about four or five years, I realized it's not that easy.

• 49:50Guy Raz?

  No.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  It's actually so incredibly difficult to break into CPG. And it's not just about one thing. First of all, a recipe isn't just a recipe. When you talk about, let's say, oat flour, there's hundreds of different types of oat flour. It's not that easy just to, you know, replicate every single ingredient we have. We specially pick, you know, our ingredients out of hundreds and hundreds of different types. So I think there's just like so much complexity even within recipes. And then there's brand, you know, it doesn't make sense for, let's say, an artificially driven brand to then all of a sudden create a natural version.

• 50:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, who, what do you stand for? Who are you?

• 50:34Guy Raz?

  Okay. So by year five, you're still not profitable, but you are bringing in enough cash that you're not really burning through your cash that quickly.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  As we're scaling into more supermarkets, I need more staff. I need more support. And so, you know, the bigger we got, the more it was eating away at, you know, whatever I'd saved from that original friends and family. And so the next big jump that the business had was getting into Publix, which is one of the largest grocery stores in the country.

• 51:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Incredibly powerful and does a great job. And I emailed the buyer and he said, yes, I'd actually love to meet with Lauren because the refrigerated cookie dough category has been flat or declining for years. So like, I've got to do something to reinvent it. So I take the meeting and I fly down next couple of months for the real review time. And he says to me, you know, can you supply all chain, like all of, every single door? Are you set up for the success of this? Are you? And I tell him, absolutely. If you give me this chance, I promise you, I will not let you down.

• 51:42Guy Raz?

  How many Publix is that, by the way?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  There's about, there's over 1,200 Publix.

• 51:47Guy Raz?

  So you're going to be in 1,200 Publix, okay?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  So I'm so excited. And then I'm like, okay, this is the year Sweet Lauren's takes off. So I brought in a food broker to help grow the food service and he lived in Cincinnati. And he gave some samples to his neighbor and his neighbor called me and said, I'd like to have a meeting with you. I work at Kroger.

• 52:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  I just baked off your cookies for my son and he absolutely loved them.

• 52:13Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  And of course, I want to give him natural and better for you ingredients.

• 52:17Guy Raz?

  Right. Cause Kroger's based in Cincinnati.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Based in Cincinnati. And Kroger is the largest, you know, supermarket in the country.

• 52:22Guy Raz?

  How did you manage to fulfill what they needed you to fulfill? I mean, they need scale. They, I mean, how did you do it?

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Once I got into Kroger, I hired a COO to help manage the factory and logistics and ingredient buying. And then I raised from some friends and family and an angel investor to have enough funds to manage this national growth.

• 52:51Guy Raz?

  And presumably to attract this high level of talent, you were also going to have to be willing to give them equity in the, in the company, significant equity.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, I was happy to. I was happy to say, if you join now, and I'm not going to pay you a huge salary, but I will give you some equity and I can now pay you, you know, a salary so that we all need to live. But be in this with me for the impact you can have for like the growth, because it's not going to be easy. And then I got the call that we, you know, we got into all doors of Kroger and all doors of Publix in 2016. It completely changed the business.

• 53:32Guy Raz?

  So overnight, you go from being in 300, you know, regional grocery stores in mainly the Northeast to like four, like something like 4,000 stores. It's a category that's already flat. You want to really be part of its, you know, pushing its, its, its, the reversal of that. So what are you going to do?

• 53:56Speaker 01

  So what I wanted to focus on was word of mouth, the customer having an incredible experience and the packaging popping off shelf as much as possible so that it would do the advertising for us.

• 54:10Guy Raz?

  Did you change the packaging at that point?

• 54:12Speaker 01

  We did. We really leaned into magenta as our color because against the competition, it really popped off shelf. It felt very modern and fun and joyful and vibrant. And we just kept getting good response from people. So we leaned into magenta and then, you know, we had our callouts of why we were different on the package.

• 54:32Guy Raz?

  Okay. What about sampling? It's a big investment. When you're in a few Whole Foods or even a few hundred, you, you can manage the sampling and getting the word out. But sampling is critical, right? It costs money.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  We didn't do it nationally. It was too, too big of an investment and we didn't think that anyone else could kind of replace me or, or us. So we decided just to put it on the shelf and be, again, strategic. So we really focused on, on testing out a bunch of different promotional sales that would go on in the store and, and word of mouth.

• 55:07Guy Raz?

  So it'd be like $2.99 a pack instead of $6.99 or whatever?

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Instead of, you know, $5.99, maybe it's two for nine or something like that. So that you're just driving people to, to say like, that looks interesting. I've never seen that. Let me give that a try.

• 55:25Guy Raz?

  And it was placed right next to the Toll House and the Pillsbury?

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Right next to the big guys. That's where we always wanted to be.

• 55:31Guy Raz?

  And tell me about how it's, how it does?

• 55:35Speaker 01

  So it does fine in that it's not doing terrible. Everyone loved the concept, but was it different enough from the big guys to really get attention, really command a higher price point than they were? Really, did people feel like it was different and worth it enough?

• 56:01Guy Raz?

  Cause it wasn't organic, right?

• 56:03Speaker 01

  It was never organic and-

• 56:05Guy Raz?

  And was that something that people in your team were like, let's just slap organic on there?

• 56:09Speaker 01

  People would say that, but then the price would have been even more expensive.

• 56:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  You know, we would have had to raise the price, the ingredients would have been more expensive. And honestly, I've always listened to the consumer and consumers weren't asking for organic. What they were asking for, cause now we're basically sold in every state being, you know, in Publix and Kroger supermarkets. So I'm getting, I'm reaching every type of family. Like this is my dream. Like, what do people think? What do they need? An overwhelming response, hundreds and hundreds of messages from all different types of families that were like, I am so excited to see finally something new and exciting in the cookie dough section, but my kid has a nut allergy.

• 56:53Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Or my husband is gluten free.

• 56:56Guy Raz?

  Soy free.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Or soy free. This was just incoming social media messages and on Facebook. And I just realized I didn't have the funds to, to buy expensive research. This was such gut feeling and just these hundreds of messages of people, as you say, that were proactively emailing me. I was not asking them this question. I was not trying to survey it. And I realized like, this was such a white space in the market. And I wanted to make sure that there was cookie dough that was delicious and made of like trustworthy, better for you ingredients. But I couldn't let, like, to hear all these other people who had food allergies not be able to eat it, like, I just couldn't let that happen.

• 57:42Guy Raz?

  So it sounds interesting and I know, and we get this all the time, but that to me, isn't a validation of what will work. And so if a lot of people are writing in saying, I want allergy free, I want allergy free, you could just look at the data and say, well, or I want gluten free. Like, what percentage of Americans are celiac? Probably half a percent, maybe a little bit more, not many.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  I think 1%, of, of Americans are celiac, but almost 20% have some dietary restrictions or food allergies. And so it's not as niche as everyone thinks.

• 58:18Guy Raz?

  So people are writing in saying, if only, if only it was free of this, if free of that, but, but then, uh, what does that mean? I mean, can you make a cookie free of, you can't make a cookie where, I mean, cause there's always going to be somebody who's like, I'm allergic to, you know, to, to sodium bicarbonate, I'm allergic to, you know what I mean? Everyone knows somebody who has an allergy and you're like, I didn't even know people were allergic to that.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Well, exactly. And I have no food allergies. I can eat everything, but I couldn't deny how many messages I was getting. It was hundreds. And also I felt like the Sweet Lauren's product on the shelf wasn't going to win the way I wanted it to, being just a little bit better than what the other guys were doing.

• 59:05Guy Raz?

  Interesting.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  So for four months, I worked on this recipe, getting rid of really the top allergens.

• 59:12Guy Raz?

  What, what are they?

• 59:13Speaker 01

  So, so soy, gluten, dairy, eggs, nuts, sesame seeds. Those are the main ones.

• 59:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  I just wanted to get rid of the things that were the major allergens. And after a couple of months, I did a small test run at a factory I found. Eventually I found a factory that was close to me in New Jersey and I was in New York. So I could drive there, which was huge. So they were doing some allergen free, like baked cookies. And so I said, well, if you can do baked cookies, can't you just do the cookie dough for me?

• 59:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  And they said, yeah, we'll figure it out. So I said, okay, let's start small so I don't waste thousands of dollars and figure it out. So I created this recipe and I remember the first test run. I remember baking off those samples and I remember I was tearing. I remember my VP of Sales was tearing. We both were like, we hate gluten free products and this tastes so incredible.

• 1:00:13Guy Raz?

  But how did you, I mean, if you were using eggs, if you were using, you know, other things, and then you take it out, what do you-

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  A ton, a ton of recipe testing. I mean, I'm talking every day in my apartment, I would just test different types of potato starch and tapioca starch and different proportions of it and baking soda, work with my oat flour to kind of, cause all an egg really does is bind. So honestly, it was just so much playing around. I tried to hire food scientists to help me, cause I thought that like, that would be the easy solve. And the food always tasted like a science project.

• 1:00:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  Like when some food scientist would help me, it never tasted like a warm, delicious homemade cookie. It tasted weird.

• 1:00:59Guy Raz?

  Okay. So here, here, so that, this is interesting, cause this is going to actually transform your business. But this is 2017, I think. So you're about six years into the business and you had basically been making cookies the same way. Now you're gonna, are you going to introduce an allergen free version? Or is everything going to become allergen free?

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Great question. So I show this to the Publix and Kroger buyers and say, based on consumer feedback, I'm really seeing requests for this. And they said, you know what? We're getting that feedback too. People want more options that are gluten free and dairy free in the store. So let's try it out. So I made sure that the package kind of screamed gluten free and dairy free, cause I wanted to make sure that they didn't confuse it with the original. And we launched that in 2017 and it became our number one SKU.

• 1:01:56Guy Raz?

  It outsold everything else.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  In six months.

• 1:01:58Guy Raz?

  And it was a chocolate chip cookie allergen free.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Chocolate chunk.

• 1:02:02Guy Raz?

  So clearly this is, this is a differentiator. And how quickly before your team is like, we gotta just make a call here. Like, should we do allergy free and non-allergy free? Are we going to use different manufacturers? Are we just going to go all in on this?

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  So we talked about it and there just seemed like there was no point in having two different lines because the allergen free line tasted just as good or better than the original line. It didn't taste gluten free. So why have two different lines? I just felt like it was so confusing for the brand. And the refrigerated dough space is, is quite competitive and small to begin with. So after six months of seeing the success of this, we said, let's by next year, make all Sweet Lauren's products free of the top allergens and let's change our packaging. So it doesn't scream gluten free anymore. And that way, even though we'll have our gluten free callouts and dairy free and, you

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  know, nut free and every, all of our callouts on the package, it's not going to be the most prominent thing.

• 1:03:10Guy Raz?

  It'll be small enough where the people who know, know.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:03:14Guy Raz?

  The people who don't notice it, won't notice it, right? So this is actually why I think you were very lucky that you didn't scale quickly in the same way, that you, you actually grew slowly. Because had you been a, you know, a universally known household name national brand in 2017, when you introduced an allergy free line, and then in 2018, when you decide to completely change the business, then it might be odd for people, oh, all of a sudden they're going allergen free. But because I think you were, people were discovering you for the first time in 2018 as an allergen free cookie brand.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I think that doing all that took a lot of time. And also I think, I think I saw so many other brands try to break into cookie dough and not succeed. And I think it's because they were just not different enough.

• 1:04:11Guy Raz?

  So I guess in 2018, all the products, and I think you're still primarily making cookie dough in 2018, and we'll get to what you're doing now, but everything is going to be vegan, going to be non-GMOs, allergen free, dairy free, gluten free, peanut free. Everything you sold was gonna, was gonna be that.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Yep. And I think the thing about cookie dough is, is that, again, a lot of people can make cookies from scratch, but it is so difficult to bake gluten free and vegan. It took me, you know, hundreds of recipes to get there.

• 1:04:52Guy Raz?

  Okay. The, today, from what I gather, the refrigerated cookie dough market category in the US is about a billion dollar business.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:05:00Guy Raz?

  So, so that's today. This is 2018. It's probably more like five, 600 million at that point.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:07Guy Raz?

  This was a turning point, obviously for the brand and, and for your bottom line. Cause I think this, 2018 is the first year you became profitable, fully profitable.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. And after struggling and figuring out product market fit and-

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  All the years of building this, to be able to feel like I was finally building a healthy business that was profitable, was growing, it was so differentiated.

• 1:05:37Guy Raz?

  So would you estimate like by the end of the first year where you go fully allergen free, are you like $5 million in sales?

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  We're doing about three and a half million.

• 1:05:49Guy Raz?

  Okay, so all right, so you have, I think by 2021, you're in 13,000 stores. And today you're in like 30,000 plus stores, but you start to go beyond just cookie dough. So you get into puff pastry, pizza crusts, pie crusts. That all, you know, eventually, I think recently gotten into scones. And I think last year I've read that you were projected to do sales over $100 million in 2025. And you're privately owned, so you know, you don't release your numbers publicly, but

• 1:06:31Guy Raz?

  clearly you're much, much bigger than you were in 2011 and 2016. Because now you're what, 14 years into this business?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have 40 plus employees now. And we've made it to the Inc. 5000 list for the last eight years in a row consecutively as one of the fastest growing companies in the US that's privately held. We're grown up finally, it's about time.

• 1:06:57Guy Raz?

  You started it when you were so young. What do you think about the sort of the long term game plan here? I mean, there are some investors and you've got a significant business allergen free category. I mean, it could go public one day or possibly more likely, you know, one of these big players may want to buy you. What do you imagine? I mean, you know, if one of these big companies is like, hey, you know, we're ready to talk.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  I just can't, I can't really think about that yet because I feel like I've worked so hard to get Sweet Lawrence to this next platform where we truly are distributed in all the major retailers. We are profitable and my five year old asked if she could take over the company when she's older. So I, I really love it. I think I've, I've found my thing, like the thing that gives me joy. I think it's, I am not planning on stopping anytime soon. I really enjoy the work. It's a lot. It was my first kid and the bigger it gets, the more consuming it is.

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  But I just, I just want to really enjoy this, this time and keep it going.

• 1:08:19Guy Raz?

  When you think about, you know, the journey you took and, and I mean,

• 1:08:26Guy Raz?

  the ups and downs and the slow growth and then the fast growth, how much do you think of where you got to has to do with luck? And how much do you think has to do with the work you put in and the grind?

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  I am grateful and I am lucky to be healthy, to be here, to have three healthy children, to have a great partner, to have figured out the business. But I've had a lot of unlucky things happen too, that were, you know, a huge challenge for me. And I think what I did was I just looked at those challenges and said, this isn't going to be my story. Like I'm in a dream of a happier, fulfilling, abundant life. And I'm gonna do whatever hard work I need to do to get there.

• 1:09:12Guy Raz?

  That's Lauren Castle, founder and CEO of Sweet Lawrence.

• 1:09:19Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode. And if you're interested in insights, ideas and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, please do sign up for my newsletter at guyraz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by Carla Esteves with music composed by Raptin Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Alex Chung. Our engineer was Jimmy Keely. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Sam Paulson, Catherine Seifer, J.C. Howard, John Isabella and Elaine Coats. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built This.