The Story Behind Sensitively Sweet

In 2022, fresh out of college and working as a designer at Grooms Office Environments, Katrina Hagan was adjusting to life with a recent lupus diagnosis. A food sensitivity test confirmed that certain ingredients—gluten, rice and corn—were aggravating her symptoms. Determined to recreate familiar flavors, Hagan took to her kitchen. She used chickpea flour to bake chocolate chip cookies. “I looked up a random recipe and substituted as my heart felt to do,” she says. Her first attempt was “the most delicious ever”—soft, sweet, and just as satisfying as the cookies she had always enjoyed.

Encouraged, she attempted the cookies a second, third and fourth time. “God knew I needed to get it right on the first try,” she says, “because those subsequent attempts were failures.” By summer 2022, she had perfected her recipe, and to make a little extra money, she offered them for sale in a local gluten-free Facebook group.

The response was immediate and positive. As Hagan added gluten-free cinnamon rolls, her side hustle quickly gained momentum. Every Friday, after she wrapped up her workday at Grooms, she met customers picking up orders. Two months after her initial post in the local group, Hagan launched Sensitively Sweet on Facebook.

In November 2022, Farmers Market of the Ozarks invited Sensitively Sweet to join its Thanksgiving event. With only two weeks to prepare, Hagan took the leap. She had no expectations. On the day of the event, a line stretched the length of the pavilion, and within the first 45 minutes, everything was sold out. Hagan’s husband Alec turned to her and said, “You might be on to something.”

When Alec developed Alpha-Gal Syndrome (AGS), which causes severe allergic reactions to mammal-derived products, Sensitively Sweet committed to ensuring their products were completely safe. “Up to this point, we’d taken baby steps—free of gluten, egg, dairy and nuts. Now, we were going to do the bakery right or not do it at all,” Hagan says. Sensitively Sweet became Alpha-Gal safe, celiac-safe, vegan, and free from the top 11 food allergens. “Above all, I couldn’t sacrifice taste. There’s a misconception that gluten-free food is dry and cardboard-like, so we worked hard to make sure everything tasted delicious.”

Business boomed, and Hagan left Grooms to focus full-time on the bakery. Throughout 2024, she was a vendor at Farmers Market of the Ozarks, and in November, she opened a storefront in Nixa. During the grand opening weekend, Hagan welcomed over 500 customers. “We were pulling items out of the oven and selling them before we could blink,” she says.

Supported by six employees, Sensitively Sweet offers a wide variety of allergy-friendly treats, including brownies, pop tarts, sourdough and cinnamon sugar breads. The bakery provides take-and-bake meals, such as chicken pot pies made with vegetarian-fed chicken and a rustic cottage pie, similar to shepherd’s pie. Additionally, Hagan sells baking mixes at Mama Jean’s, Hy-Vee and Brown Derby. Someday, she hopes to open an allergen-free café.

Sensitively Sweet’s treats are undeniably delicious, but for Hagan, the real achievement is the community that has grown around them. “Our society revolves around socialization with food. There’s an entire community that is excluded. People walk through the doors and say, ‘I wanted a brownie, and I was just diagnosed with Alpha-Gal.’ Almost every conversation is about our experiences.” Time and again, Hagan has watched parents come to the bakery and tell their children dealing with allergies or chronic illness, “You can have anything here.” After being unable to enjoy so many foods, the children’s eyes light up in wonder.

Today, Hagan still makes those original chocolate chip cookies, only now she has a 30-quart commercial mixer that can manage 42 pounds of dough. “I am still surprised every day,” she says. “I’m not Houdini. I was just in the right place, at the right time, with the right idea.”