Eat Or Bake? Whoa! Dough Says Both

One could make the case that all cookie dough is edible if you really want it to be, but Whoa Dough is looking to take dough outside of the traditional baking set and make better-for-you snacks that are more than just salmonella-free.

The Ohio-based brand has been selling shelf-stable plant-based and gluten-free cookie dough snack bars since late 2020 and now turned its attention to cookie dough’s main use – cookies – with the launch of Eat or Bake Cookie Dough this week. The product will roll out in retail later this year with nine cookies per pack that hone all of the brand’s core tenets, including “snackability.”

“Whether it’s an art museum or a playdate – you can’t take cookie dough with you for those purposes,” said founder Todd Goldstein. “I thought to myself if we can create a shelf-stable cookie dough that you can eat on-the-go, that’s gluten-free – people will love it.”

Goldstein first set out to make a cookie dough snack that his kids could enjoy – both of which, in addition to Goldstein himself, suffer from Celiac disease. When he began looking at the market in 2019, cookie dough as an indulgent treat had just begun to gain traction with dough “scoop shops” opening up and tub-packed dough products like The Cookie Dough Cafe expanding in the market.

Whoa Dough now sells seven snack bar flavors – ranging from Oatmeal to Brownie Batter – made with a gluten-free flour blend (whole grain oat and chickpea flour), plus allulose, brown sugar, palm oil, tapioca fiber and natural flavors. The new cookie format contains the same base ingredients with the addition of tapioca flour, cane sugar, xanthan gum, vanilla and sunflower lecithin.

While Eat or Bake Cookie Dough is not shelf-stable, it does not contain eggs and can be consumed raw. It will be stocked alongside other refrigerated cookie doughs once it reaches retail by Q4, Goldstein said. Though portability is a key attribute for the bars, the dough is more about giving customers another use case for the product and was created following frequent questions from consumers on whether they could bake the bars into cookies.

The market for edible cookie dough has continued to expand since the brand’s launch, growing over 17% to a $685 million market over the past year and steadily increasing nearly 5% since 2020, according to recent data from SPINS. However, conventional players Pillsbury and Nestlé’s Toll House hold a combined 90% share of the market and, in the better-for-you space, Goldstein believes gluten-free dough brand Sweet Loren’s may be Whoa Dough’s closest incumbent.

“We’re trying to kind of be like that middle of the road product,” he said “From a scoopable standpoint, there’s always been competitors… [but] they’re not a snack. You need a spoon. You need a bowl. You need a container. If you can rip it open and put it in your mouth – that’s a snack.”

Whoa Dough’s approach to the market and category appears to be shaping up. The bars are currently sold in nearly 2,500 retailers nationwide including Albertsons, Giant, Fresh Thyme Market, Kroger and more; they are priced at $2.49 per bar ($9.99 per 4-pack) and the Eat Or Bake format will sell for between $5.99 to $6.99 per 6.9 oz pouch.

With the bars, Goldstein has pursued placement both in the protein bar aisle as well as at points of sale in order to drive trial, but also show consumers that dough can be a grab and go snack. That strategy also influenced the brand’s packaging design which Goldstein said was heavily inspired by Perfect Bar’s approach to the refrigerated set.

“Going into the refrigerated set, [Perfect] had to maximize their space and so instead of designing our packaging like a traditional laid-out box, we decided for it to be upright,” explained Goldstein, an approach allows the product to essentially secure four logo facings rather than the presence of a single flat box.

Outside of retail, the brand has also focused heavily on securing partnerships within the K-12 market over the past year and currently distributes to 40 school districts nationwide. As of August 2022, Whoa Dough’s treats are available to all First Class passengers on American Airlines, a placement Goldstein called a “dream.”

Looking toward the next two years, Goldstein said Whoa Dough will focus innovation on new flavors, both for its bars as well as its new bakeable line. He said that while the products will continue to always build on their better-for-you position, the brand does not plan to make any functional plays with the product formulations.

“At some point, people just want cookie dough and this gives a convenient way where everyone can eat it,” he said.