How Loren Castle Beat Cancer and Built Brand No. 1 of natural cookie dough

For most people, a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie can turn any frown upside down. For Loren Castle, classical treatment became a lifesaver.

With little to lose after a brutal battle with cancer, the native New Yorker — who wanted more than anything to live a normal, healthy, happy life — walked into Whole Foods with a plate of homemade cookies and a dream to have her game. changing the baking business.

Roughly a decade later — its “10-year overnight success,” Castle told The Post — Sweet Loren’s, an all-natural cookie dough company that uses plant-based, non-GMO, gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free ingredients , nuts and peanuts, is brand no. 1 in its category, sold in 25,000 supermarkets across the country.

“There’s a happiness and joy that fresh cookies and baked goods bring to you that you’ve been missing,” the tough cookie, now 40 and cancer-free, told The Post. “After I got sick, I just couldn’t eat [them] in the same way.”

“Food is how we get energy – If I’m feeding myself junk food,” she recalled telling herself, “I won’t have the energy to fight this.”

Castle’s rise began with a serious setback in the form of a shocking diagnosis in 2006, after graduating from college in Los Angeles and returning home to Manhattan.

A mysterious swollen neck sent him to the hospital and the news was terrible.

“[The oncologist] looked at me and said, ‘You’ve got nothing, or you’ve got Hodgkin’s lymphoma,’” Castle recalled.

After testing, she received a diagnosis of Stage 2 Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system – the part of the body’s immune system that fights germs and disease – when healthy cells change and grow out of control.

“At 22, it was so unimaginable,” Castle said. “From the outside, I looked very healthy.”

While all of Castle’s friends were out celebrating, landing their first jobs and feeling invincible, she began six months of chemotherapy and fell into depression.

“I lost hope in everything,” she said. “I’ve always been a very optimistic, happy person and cancer I just didn’t expect. I wasn’t prepared to deal with that and it really got me down.”

To get through it, she began therapy, which helped her see how overcoming cancer could give her strength and a greater appreciation of life.

“It’s all in our minds, it’s all the way we look at things,” Castle said, recalling seeing the fork in the road.

She can continue to sit on her couch and be miserable, or she can do everything in her power to get healthy.

“If I could figure out how to turn it into a superpower, it wouldn’t hinder me in life — it might actually propel me,” Castle said. “I just wanted to love life and get through this. I was determined.”

Food turned out to be the best medicine for that. During treatment, Castle began taking cooking classes — and studying food.

Having previously worked at the original Levain Bakery location on the Upper West Side, Castle had a sweet tooth, but having a “weird diet” limited him from tearing into every box of cookies.

“I wanted a cookie that I could eat all the time and just not have it make me feel bad. All of this inspired me to really start Sweet Loren’s,” she said.

Amazingly, just about a year later in 2007, Castle got a clean bill of health and was cancer free. But since she still needed checkups every few months for the next five years to make sure it didn’t come back, her life was still on hold.

During this time, she wanted to be “normal” and find a job like her friends, trying to find work in finance, public relations or in a restaurant – but she realized that in her condition at the time , working for someone else wasn’t going to cut it, and at her core, she was an entrepreneur.

After perfecting a recipe for “really delicious, decadent, warm cookies,” Castle was able to land a meeting with the lead buyer at the Columbus Circle Whole Foods with the help of a friend in her business class.

She came in without a packaged product – just a plate of cookies. The next day, the buyer called and asked how soon they could place an order, and that sent Kala into her rush.

As a one-woman show at the time, she did in-store demos herself, bringing a toaster oven in a subway suitcase to Whole Foods Markets around town—but being a young cancer survivor in her 20s came with its own challenges. .

“People used to ask me in the early years, ‘Well, are you better now? Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ And that was kind of hard, because it would be, ‘Yeah, now I’m healthy and you can trust this business,'” Castle said. “But then it would scare me a little. What if he comes back?”

Castle is as passionate and motivated today as she was at the beginning of her journey, which she attributes in part to Sweet Loren’s loyal customers.

“Every day I get messages from people saying we’ve changed their lives,” Castle said, noting that fans often invite Castle to their weddings.

One of the most exciting moments? A couple who named their baby Loren after the company.

“You start to realize: I’m not alone in this,” Castle said. “It’s the best feeling in the world and I don’t take it for granted.”