47. Quitting Wall Street to Make the Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie with Carolyn Haeler
Carolyn Haeler is the founder and CEO of Mightylicious Gluten-Free, a company that offers delicious gluten-free cookies and flour blends. With a background in business and finance, Carolyn worked in private banking and wealth management on Wall Street for a decade at the intersection of economics and personal wealth management.
In 2011, Carolyn was diagnosed with celiac disease. She described the challenges of managing the disease, particularly the difficulty of finding gluten-free foods that are both nutritious and enjoyable. Despite the availability of gluten-free products, Carolyn found many of them unsatisfying and expensive, leading her to cook most of her meals. Despite having no formal culinary training, she left her job at a hedge fund in 2017 to pursue her passion for baking gluten-free cookies.
She worked 12 hours a day for three months experimenting with recipes, eventually developing a stable and replicable recipe for her Brown Butter Chocolate Chip cookies, which she tested at Whole Foods in Manhattan using homemade labels on coffee bags.
Carolyn shared her journey of securing funding which enabled rapid expansion and access to distributors and brokers. She emphasized the importance of starting small, building a proof of concept, and exploring various funding options before seeking investors.
Mightylicious cookies are now available in grocery stores nationwide, including Sprouts, H-E-B, and Giant, as well as online at mightylicious.com and Amazon.
Contact
Site: https://www.mightylicious.com
Email: [email protected]
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