DTC POD: From 1 Kitchen to 25,000 Supermarkets: How Loren Castle’s Cookie Dough Recipe Became a US Household Brand

This week, our guest is Loren Castle, the Founder and CEO of Sweet Loren’s. Best known for their cookie doughs, they’re now launching low-sugar cookie dough recipes, biscuits, and even pizza dough.

Join us as we talk about finding the right partners to work with, how making risky decisions for the sake of the long-term ROI is essential, and the journey from bootstrapping to being a massive, successful CPG brand.

3 Big Lessons from Loren

Lesson #1: Find great partners to work with.

Loren’s journey started with all-natural cookie doughs. And when Whole Foods put in their first order, she realized that while she enjoyed making the recipes, she couldn’t spend most of her time making the tons of dough that needed to be made.

Which meant she needed to find a factory partner that could produce all of it. Though the one she ended up working with had never made cookie dough, they worked together to figure it all out.

From there, she paid one of the factory workers to drive it down to the store, while she was in charge of demoing and getting feedback.

All of this to say, it’s easy to feel guilty when you start outsourcing your work, but don’t. It’s a necessary part of scaling.

And the process is much easier when you’re partnered up with a great team.

Lesson #2: Make decisions for the long-term.

Sweet Loren’s Cookie Dough product is in a competitive niche.

First of all, they’re in the refrigerated part of the supermarket. Which means they’re competing with things like cheese, eggs and milk– both of which, as you might imagine, move at incredible speeds.

It’s also an impulse-buy type of product. Meaning most of their market share isn’t in DTC, but these supermarkets– where again, it’s hard to get shelf space.

But Loren’s product had something none of the others did. They were allergen free, and they had redesigned their packaging to pop out of the fridge with their colors, and now it included a call-out mentioning they’re gluten, nut, dairy and even GMO free.

So people started seeing the product, picking it up and realizing they could buy one pack for their whole family instead of a weird allergen-free version for each different member.

After they saw it quickly became their number one SKU, Sweet Loren’s made the switch and they’ve never looked back.

Lesson #3: Bootstrapping a CPG Brand.

The company has always been as lean as possible. For a long time it was only Loren, even when she hired her first member it was just an intern. But by the time they reached Publix, it was still only a team of three people.

To that point, most of the money raised was from friends and family because they weren’t as profitable as they wanted to be.

But, after they switched to allergen-free, non-conventional ingredients, they were able to raise their prices and reach a healthier margin.

After that, money hasn’t been a worry, and now their focus can be on ROI and profitability while being small and lean.

The main thing we want you to take away from this is that you don’t need a massive team with dozens of departments to start. Having a mix of outsourcing parts of the process that you can’t/don’t want to deal with, along with a great team is a surefire way to be successful.

DTC Job Positions!

Director, Plant Quality Operations at Bobbie

• Description: Lead plant quality at Bobbie's Heath, OH facility, ensuring compliance and safety standards.

• Responsibilities: Manage site quality, develop team, analyze data, oversee audits, and implement corrective actions.

• Benefits: Competitive salary, full healthcare coverage, 20 PTO days, 10 holidays, snacks, meals, and formula subscription.

Product Lead (Remote) at arena.online 

• Description: Lead product development, manage teams, drive innovation for leading D2C e-commerce company specializing in horticultural products.

• Responsibilities: Oversee product development, merge businesses, manage engineering team, drive key development streams.

• Benefits: Competitive salary, free flowers, health insurance, pension, perks, growth opportunities, inclusive workplace culture.

Associate, Logistics & Operations at Tracksmith

• Description: Support operations team, manage logistics, execute campaigns for customer-centered experience in growing e-commerce environment.

• Responsibilities: Manage inbound/outbound logistics, order management, troubleshoot delays, execute marketing campaigns, support team.

• Benefits: Opportunity to learn ecommerce and operations, supportive team environment, potential for growth and ongoing improvement.

That wraps up this week’s newsletter!

As always, reply any time with thoughts, questions, reactions, or ideas for future issues. And don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn to unlock new episodes of DTC Pod each week!