How Carolyn Haeler built Mightylicious Gluten Free Foods
Carolyn Haeler, founder and CEO of Mightylicious Gluten Free Foods, makes gluten-free cookies, flour blends and brownie mix. Haeler explains how a problem with gluten-free flour shaped the business, how Whole Foods became its first customer, and what a shelf-life issue taught about testing new products.
Solving a taste problem can start with rethinking an ingredient, but a new product also needs thorough testing before launch. Mightylicious’s experience with a brownie mix that had shelf-life problems made that lesson clear.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
At 31, Carolyn Haeler appeared to have it all—a successful career in finance at J.P. Morgan and a lifelong passion for baking. Then she spent nine months battling unexplained illness before receiving a life-changing diagnosis: celiac disease.
Rather than accepting the disappointing reality of gluten-free foods, Carolyn walked away from Wall Street after opening a package of stale, flavorless gluten-free cookies and asking herself one simple question: "Why does gluten-free have to taste this bad?"
She spent four months baking up to 15 hours a day, ultimately discovering that the problem wasn’t the recipes—it was the flour. Her determination led her directly to the mill, where she developed an innovative flour blend that behaves like traditional wheat flour, creating cookies that consumers often can’t believe are gluten free.
Today, Mightylicious has grown from a kitchen experiment into a nationally recognized brand sold in 43 states, including Hawaii and Alaska.
The company has earned consecutive Good Housekeeping’s Best Snacks honors in 2025 and 2026, expanded into gluten-free flour blends and baking mixes, and raised $5 million through Republic—making Carolyn the first female LGBTQ+ founder to achieve that fundraising milestone on the platform.
Yet despite the company’s growth, Mightylicious remains founder-operated, with Carolyn continuing to lead every aspect of the business.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
WHOLE FOODS was my first customer. Today customers come from AMAZON, the MIGHTYLICIOUS GF website, and the multitude of supermarkets that carry our products. In fact, recently 75+ Wegmans stores just took our MIGHTYLICIOUS GF cookie line.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
I was able to raise $5 million in 24 ours though a capital raise on the Republic platform. That helped to expand the business with marketing and other areas for business growth. One mistake was production of a ready-made brownie we developed, but we had problems with shelf-life. We need a lot of product testing before we launch a new item in the GF line.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
Today more than one in tem Americans follow a gluten free diet, and Gluten Free is among the fastest growing categories in the food industry. Our GL Oatmeal coconut cookies have been named among the best snacks of 2025 and 2026 by GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. We continue to provide the very best Gluten Free ready made cookies as we as Gluten Free Baking Flour Blends and brownie blend, so consumers can create their own GF recipes for themselves, family and friends.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
Follow your dreams; Take advice from others who have succeeded; hire the very best you can afford; dont rush the process;
Thank you to Carolyn Haeler and the team at Mightylicious Gluten Free Foods for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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