607: How I Built a $120M/Year Cookie Business From My Appartment | Loren Castle
Timestamps are as accurate as they can be but may be slightly off. We encourage you to listen to the full context.
Podcast Summary
In this inspiring episode, Nathan Chan sits down with Loren Castle, founder of Sweet Loren's, a company that has grown from a $25,000 startup to a $120 million annual revenue business. (02:02) Castle's journey began when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at 22, just three months after graduating college. This life-changing health crisis sparked her passion for clean eating and eventually led to the creation of what she calls "the best cookies in the world." (02:28) Starting with small-batch cookie dough made in her New York apartment and demoing products from a rolling suitcase on the subway, Castle built Sweet Loren's into a national brand now sold in over 5,000 supermarkets. The conversation reveals how she landed Whole Foods without proper packaging, made the pivotal decision to go all-in on allergen-free ingredients, and scaled profitably while staying true to her mission-driven purpose.
- Main themes include turning personal adversity into business opportunity, finding product-market fit through direct customer feedback, and building a differentiated brand in the competitive CPG space
Speakers
Nathan Chan
Nathan is the founder and CEO of Foundr, a leading entrepreneurship education platform that helps aspiring founders scale their businesses. He hosts the Foundr Podcast, where he interviews successful entrepreneurs and shares proven strategies for business growth.
Loren Castle
Loren is the founder of Sweet Loren's, a clean-ingredient cookie dough company that generates $120 million annually and is sold in over 5,000 supermarkets nationwide. After being diagnosed with cancer at 22, she channeled her passion for healthy eating into building one of the most successful allergen-free food brands in America. She started the company with just $25,000 in savings and has maintained profitability while scaling to nine figures in revenue.
Key Takeaways
Start Impossibly Small and Listen to Your Customers
Castle didn't begin with a grand business plan or market research. Instead, she started with her own pain point and began making cookies for herself during cancer treatment. (02:38) She then spent countless hours demoing products directly to customers, taking a rolling suitcase with a toaster oven on the New York subway to bake fresh cookies in grocery store aisles. This direct customer interaction provided invaluable feedback that shaped everything from packaging to flavors. The key insight is that authentic customer feedback beats theoretical market research every time.
Find Your Differentiation Before You Scale
Castle's pivot to allergen-free ingredients wasn't planned—it came from listening to hundreds of customer emails requesting products for family members with food allergies. (26:58) When she launched one allergen-free SKU, it became their number one seller within six months. This taught her that true differentiation creates a moat around your business. Rather than being slightly better than competitors, being completely different in a meaningful way allows you to charge premium pricing and build customer loyalty.
Focus Creates Profit
Despite growing to $120 million in revenue, Sweet Loren's has maintained fewer than 10 SKUs over seven years. (31:11) Castle explains that staying hyper-focused on cookie dough, rather than expanding into dozens of products, allowed them to perfect their offering and maintain healthy margins. This focus enabled them to stay profitable since going allergen-free, while many CPG companies struggle with profitability due to over-diversification.
Weekly Mentorship Is a Game-Changer
Castle credits much of her success to seven years of weekly mentorship sessions with advisors outside the food industry. (38:39) These sessions provided emotional support, strategic clarity, and helped her stay focused amid the chaos of scaling a business. The mentors helped her see the most important goals for each week and provided perspective during challenging decisions like switching factories and negotiating major contracts. For solo founders especially, this structured support system can be the difference between success and burnout.
Build a Brand with Soul and Personality
In today's market, Castle emphasizes that companies can't survive being one-dimensional. (49:44) Customers want to trust brands, know what they stand for, and feel connected to their story. Sweet Loren's success comes partly from Castle's willingness to share her personal cancer journey and mission. Even viral moments like their intern accidentally changing their TikTok name to "Ryan" became opportunities to show authenticity and humor, resulting in a 46% increase in website sales.
Statistics & Facts
- Sweet Loren's has grown to $120 million in annual revenue while being bootstrapped, demonstrating that profitable scaling is possible in the competitive CPG space. (00:56)
- The company is now sold in over 5,000 supermarkets nationwide, showing the reach Castle achieved starting from a single Whole Foods location. (00:59)
- Within six months of launching their allergen-free chocolate chunk cookie dough, it became their number one SKU, proving the market demand for inclusive food products. (27:22)
- 50% of Sweet Loren's customers had never shopped the cookie dough category before, indicating they successfully expanded the market rather than just taking share from competitors. (22:29)
- The viral TikTok incident where an intern changed their name to "Ryan" resulted in a 46% increase in website sales, showing how authenticity can drive business results. (48:31)
