A Dallas founder on why a better-for-you treat has to be a really good cookie first, 60,000 orders in, and the retail buyers and brand partners she wants to meet next.
Addison LaBonte walked into a local coffee shop, saw one of her own cookies in the case, and bought it. “Not because I needed a cookie,” she wrote afterward. “Because I’m genuinely obsessed with the product.” A founder, she wrote, spends so much time looking at spreadsheets, margins, inventory and conversion rates that it can be easy to forget the simplest question: “Would I actually buy this if it were someone else’s brand?” Her answer was “a very enthusiastic yes.”
Shoppers ask a version of that question at every shelf, and taste settles it more often than anything else. In the International Food Information Council’s 2026 Food & Health Survey of 3,005 Americans, 88% said taste has a high impact on what they buy. Healthfulness drew 56%.
Addison is the founder and CEO of Sweet Addison’s, a gluten-free, better-for-you bakery in Dallas, and her case is that nobody should have to pick between the two. The bakery makes big, soft, bakery-style cookies, brownies and blondies from simple ingredients like almond flour, olive oil and coconut sugar, without gluten, refined sugar, seed oils, preservatives, corn or soy. It launched in January 2024, has grown primarily through direct-to-consumer sales, and recently passed 60,000 orders. She says it’s on pace for multi-seven-figure revenue in 2026.
Her next phase is retail and partnerships, and the people she most wants to reach are retail buyers and strategic brand partners.
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The Versions She Didn’t Launch
Her read on the category is direct. “I think a lot of ‘healthy’ treats ask the customer to compromise on taste,” she says. They lead with what the product doesn’t have, she says, and “forget that at the end of the day, someone is buying a cookie because they want a really good cookie.”
She learned that in her own recipe development. “There were plenty of early versions that checked every ingredient box I wanted them to check, but the texture or flavor wasn’t good enough,” she says. She didn’t launch them.
“I wouldn’t launch something simply because the nutrition panel or ingredient list looked impressive. It had to be something I genuinely craved.”
Addison LaBonte, Founder & CEO, Sweet Addison’s
She calls that a foundational rule for the company: “better-for-you should never mean settling for something that tastes ‘healthy.’” The rule shows in what comes out of the box.
What’s in the Box
“When you open a Sweet Addison’s box, I want it to feel like you just walked into your favorite local bakery,” she says. She describes the products as thick, soft, gooey and indulgent. The range runs from the classic Chocolate Chip Cookies and Fudge Brownies to protein cookies and blondies, limited-edition seasonal flavors, and what she calls functional products, such as the Creatine Chocolate Chip Cookie made with PROMIX.
The ingredient side is just as specific. Almond flour, olive oil and coconut sugar go in. Gluten, refined sugar, seed oils, preservatives, corn and soy don’t. “The goal has always been to make the treat you actually want to eat, just with ingredients you feel better about,” she says.
At least one local coffee shop now carries the cookies. She has written that there is “something pretty surreal” about seeing a product that started as an idea in her head sitting on the shelf of a local business.
The founder behind that product is a former Division I soccer player with a math degree.
Soccer, Math and a Recipe Platform
Addison was born and raised in York Harbor, Maine, and at the University of Maine she played Division I soccer, majored in math with a business minor, and earned a degree from the Maine Honors College. Before entrepreneurship she worked in finance at Prime Buchholz, which she says taught her “to think analytically and pay attention to the numbers.”
Then there is Organically Addison, which she describes as her food, wellness and lifestyle platform, where she built an online community around approachable gluten-free recipes and better-for-you living before launching Sweet Addison’s. Her LinkedIn profile puts that recipe business at over 1 million monthly page views and over 1.7 million followers across her social media channels. Building it, she says, taught her “how to understand consumers, content and community.”
The bakery’s start is told in a post she shared from a recent podcast appearance. She posted a cookie recipe on Instagram and TikTok, a few of the videos went viral, and messages came in from across the country asking, “Where can I buy these?” The first month of the business brought $8,000 in sales, from her apartment kitchen, with no paid marketing budget.
“Sweet Addison’s sits at the intersection of all three experiences,” she says of athletics, finance and Organically Addison. “I care deeply about the product, but I’m equally obsessed with customer feedback, margins, retention, marketing and the hundreds of small decisions that compound into growth.”
What soccer left her with is a rule about showing up.
The Days That Aren’t Exciting
“Being a Division I athlete taught me that consistency is far more powerful than intensity,” she says. She applies that to running, recipe testing, content and the business itself.
“You don’t become a better athlete because of one incredible workout; you become better because you show up every day, especially on the days when it isn’t exciting.”
Addison, Founder & CEO, Sweet Addison’s
“I approach entrepreneurship the same way,” she says, and she describes the habit as “showing up every single day and letting small efforts compound.” Her parents, she says, have had a huge influence on how she works. They taught her early “that no job is beneath you and that if you commit to something, you follow through.”
She doesn’t present any of it as easy. Entrepreneurship, she has written, “can be brutally hard.” Asked for a hard moment, she says, “Some of our biggest growth periods have stretched our operations to their limits, and they taught me to solve the immediate problem quickly while simultaneously building the systems that prevent it from happening again.”
Buying her own cookie is part of how she works, too. One of the most important things an entrepreneur can do, she wrote, is “stay close to the customer you were in the beginning.” Her list is short: “Keep buying the product. Keep using it. Keep asking yourself what could be better.”
Athletics also changed how she thinks about food.
A Creatine Cookie, With a Partner
“I want food that supports an active lifestyle, but I refuse to believe that means everything has to taste utilitarian,” she says. Sweet Addison’s makes protein cookies and blondies alongside the classics, and she names protein and functional treats as the area where the company will keep innovating.
“You can care about performance and ingredients and still want an incredible cookie.”
Addison, Founder & CEO, Sweet Addison’s
The wider appetite for protein is on record. In Cargill’s 2025 Protein Profile, 61% of consumers reported increasing their protein intake in 2024, up from 48% in 2019.
The partnership she says she’s especially excited about is with PROMIX. “We created a Creatine Chocolate Chip Cookie using their creatine monohydrate, combining two brands that share a similar customer and philosophy around high-quality ingredients and performance,” she says. “I see partnerships like that as a meaningful part of where Sweet Addison’s can go next.”
Where it goes next is the part she is working on now.
Where Addison Is Now
Sweet Addison’s has been built, in her words, “largely online and organically.” The phase she describes now has three parts: expanding retail, building strategic partnerships, and continuing to innovate in protein and functional treats.
Over the next twelve months, the people she most wants to hear from are retail buyers and strategic brand partners, and in particular those “who believe there is a huge opportunity for better-for-you treats that still taste truly indulgent.” She describes what the company has built so far as “a strong direct-to-consumer business and an incredibly loyal customer base.” If the right investors find Sweet Addison’s along the way, she says, that’s great. Buyers and partners come first.
The ambition is national. She wants to turn Sweet Addison’s into “the go-to national brand for better-for-you indulgence,” online, on retail shelves and through partnerships with brands the company believes in.
Outside work she is an endurance runner, and she says training for long-distance races gives her “both structure and perspective outside of work.” She has also written about spending a Tuesday at a friend’s ranch making steak, with no boss to ask, and about the freedom she values most, which is time. “The goal was never just to build a successful business,” she wrote. “It was to build a life I don’t need to escape from.”
She closed her account of the coffee shop with a verdict: “10/10 would buy my own cookie again.” The larger point is the one she wants the company to make. “I want to prove,” she says, “that you should never have to choose between ingredients you feel good about and food you genuinely love.”
The Addison LaBonte Playbook: Building a Treat People Want to Eat
- Launch only what you crave. Early recipes that checked every ingredient box but fell short on texture or flavor didn’t launch.
- Buy your own product. She bought her cookie at a coffee shop with her own money, to experience the brand from the other side of the transaction.
- Show up on the unexciting days. Running, recipe testing, content and the business get the same daily consistency she learned as a Division I athlete.
- Fix the problem, then build the system. When growth stretched operations to their limits, she solved the immediate problem quickly while building the systems that keep it from happening again.
- Partner with brands that share your customer. The Creatine Chocolate Chip Cookie with PROMIX combines two brands with a similar customer and a shared philosophy on ingredients and performance.
From the Diary of Addison LaBonte
Addison LaBonte is a Dallas-based entrepreneur and the Founder & CEO of Sweet Addison’s.
| Role | Founder & CEO, Sweet Addison’s |
| Based in | Dallas, Texas |
| Previously | Data Analyst, Prime Buchholz LLC, 2018 to 2023 |
| Also | Chief Executive Officer, Organically Addison |
“I want to prove that you should never have to choose between ingredients you feel good about and food you genuinely love.”
Editor’s Note
The editors chose Addison LaBonte because her argument and her order numbers point the same way. She says a better-for-you treat has to be a treat first, and she holds her own recipes to it, declining to launch the ones that pass on ingredients and fall short on taste. Sweet Addison’s has passed 60,000 orders since January 2024, primarily direct to consumer. She is now taking that record to retail buyers and brand partners, and she is specific about who she wants to hear from.
Executives Diary, Editorial
