Sweet Loren’s tested “hundreds of patches” to achieve the natural pink hue for its Barbie-branded cookies as the baked goods company takes a measured approach to innovation in 2025, said brand Founder and CEO Loren Castle.
Sweet Loren’s partnered with toymaker Mattel to launch refrigerated ready-to-bake Barbie Heart Shaped Sugar Cookies, formulated without the top 14 allergens, including dairy, eggs and nuts. Additionally, the cookies are free of artificial flavors and colors, using beet powder to create the iconic Barbie pink color.
Each package of sugar cookies contains 12 pre-cut heart-shaped cookies for $6.99, available direct to consumers via the brand’s website and retailers like Whole Foods, Sprouts Farmers Markets, Kroger, HyVee and others as well as select Costco and Target locations.
The two brands were a natural fit together because “Barbie and Sweet Loren’s are just iconically pink,” Castle explained.
“You can partner with a lot of brands and throw their logo on your package. We did not want to do that. We wanted to do something that felt genuine - authentic - that could totally push both brands,” she elaborated.
Creating Barbie pink in cookies took ‘hundreds of batches’
Sweet Loren’s x Barbie Heart Shaped Sugar Cookies launched the same week the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoked its authorization of Red No. 3 due to animal studies that triggered the 1960 Delaney Clause of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which states the FDA must prohibit ingredients that are shown to cause cancer in humans or animals.
FDA’s decision to revoke Red No. 3 tees up mandatory reformulations for many CPG companies, which is expected to spur demands for natural food dyes. With the Barbie launch, Sweet Loren’s knows first-hand how “incredibly complicated” formulating with natural food dye is, Castle explained.
“It really was challenging to get this pink color. I cannot tell you the dozens of natural pink dyes we tried ─ the hundreds of batches,” Castle elaborated.
In researching various natural dyes, Sweet Loren’s found that many natural dyes did not work well with the cookie dough recipe, as high temperatures often burned out the color and various natural colors interacted with the salt in the recipe, Castle explained.
Ultimately, Sweet Loren’s selected a beet powder to create the pink color, but the brand added just enough to impart the color and not the earthy off-notes that come with too much from the ingredient, Castle said.
“Beets kept coming up as the best way to create pink, and it is not a bright magenta, artificial-looking pink. It is a soft, natural pink, which actually is much more appetizing to eat,” Castle said.
Innovating strategically: New launches must be ‘incremental to the business’
Over the last year, Sweet Loren’s expanded beyond the refrigerated cookie category into adjacent categories like puff pastries and pizza and pie doughs. The prior year, Sweet Loren’s moved beyond the refrigerated aisle for the first time with a portfolio of breakfast biscuits, available in chocolate, cinnamon sugar and blueberry flavors.
Sweet Loren is exploring other ways to expand its presence in the refrigerated aisle but is being pragmatic about how the brand approaches portfolio expansion so as not to impact the business’s profitability, Castle explained.
“We are a profitable brand that has not raised a lot of VC or private equity money at all. We just have to be really smart about how we grow to make sure we are also growing a healthy business. And all that to say is that it makes us really look at data. It makes us really focused on anything we launch. We have to have the utmost confidence that it is really incremental to the business – it is really going to drive the whole portfolio forward,” said Castle.
