Sweet Diplomacy, a gluten-free and special-diet baking company that ships its products nationwide, has a simple philosophy: "Delicious knows no borders.”
The allergen-conscious company was born from founder Melody Hu’s desire to produce special diet-friendly treats that unite people, celebrating world flavors and inclusive tastes. After experimenting with gluten-free pastries starting in 2017, Hu’s creations and social media following quickly grew in popularity. Sweet Diplomacy now has a brick-and-mortar location in Los Altos, CA, a commercial kitchen in Boulder, CO, and an online menu shipping across the U.S.
With a commitment to creating a sustainable gift experience, Sweet Diplomacy uses clean ingredients and chooses sustainable packaging materials that are plant-based, compostable, reusable, or recyclable. The bakery also supports global humanitarian aid food supply efforts, donating 1% of all earnings to World Central Kitchen.
We were recently able to connect with Hu to chat about the brand.
Liz Parker: Why did you initially start Sweet Diplomacy, and do you eat gluten-free?
Melody Hu: One day I baked muffins with Asian sweet rice flour that were naturally gluten-free, and my gluten-loving French husband loved them and offhandedly said that they were so good, I should sell them. I dismissed that comment at first, but life has this amazing way of pulling you toward your purpose and mission, and a few years later, I heeded the call to serve people with special diet needs by opening Sweet Diplomacy.
I grew up in Taiwan, raised on my grandparents' home-cooked meals that I later realized were amazingly wholesome: fresh produce, eggs, and seafood from the market, with rice and sweet potatoes as the main staples. I then traveled and lived in different pockets of the world, in places where bread and pastries were predominant in traditional foods. Over the years, I observed that my body reacts best to the food of my ancestral diets, so I try to eat in a way that's primarily fresh vegetables with rice and potatoes as the main staples—so yes, my own diet is mostly gluten-free.
Even though I don't have any allergies (which I attribute to eating from my dog's bowl when I was a toddler and building up a high immune tolerance!), I want to share the joy of food with people with special diet constraints. That joy and love not only fuels everything I do at Sweet Diplomacy, but they’re what get me through the tough times I sometimes experience with my business.
LP: How did your menu change (if it did) once you expanded to have both a brick-and-mortar location and a website?
MH: Running a brick-and-mortar bakery that offers gluten-free and numerous vegan baked goods has been a fun journey. We have customers who come in specifically to meet their dietary needs, but we also have lots of people from the neighborhood who don't necessarily have special diet needs, but who nevertheless appreciate the freshness and quality of a made-from-scratch bakery that really cares about its products and the people who consume them.
Once we started answering requests to ship our baked goods, a lot of research and recipe testing went into launching that arm of the business. Since many of the products sold on the website are gifts, we wanted to cater the products to as many special diet needs as possible, to be as inclusive as possible. At our brick-and-mortar store, everything is gluten-free, and although there are many vegan options, some products contain dairy and eggs and nuts. Our online offerings are for the most part allergen-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free, nut-free, and vegan plant–based, so when you give a Sweet Diplomacy gift box to someone, you have peace of mind knowing that your recipient will be able to enjoy the items you’re lovingly sending them no matter their diet.
LP: How do you choose clean ingredients and sustainable packaging for your products?
MH: It takes a lot of research. Not only are we tasked with finding ingredients that will make our products taste delicious, but compared to a traditional baked goods company, the fact that we cater to so many special diets means that we can't always use the most easily available products on the market. So let’s just say that during recipe development, there’s a whole lot of trial and error that goes into getting the best results!
The same goes for packaging sourcing. I went through a lengthy sampling process before settling on what we currently use. I knew I wanted compostable bags to package our inventory for shipping, but many of them were very hard to heat-seal, some were brittle and made a lot of noise, and many others were cost inhibitive. Additionally, some of the most sustainable packaging manufacturers are smaller in size, meaning products can be out-of-stock more easily, so we had to start another search for alternative and backup sources.
It's a labor of love to insist on clean ingredients and sustainable packaging, and it's understandable that some companies simply just don't have the will, the need, or the resources to make this an ongoing commitment. At the end of the day, we try really hard to do so, and I believe our customers appreciate us all the more for our shared discernment and values.
LP: The company also donates to global humanitarian aid food supply efforts. How do you choose what charities to donate to?
MH: When you open a bakery, everyone will ask you to donate—maybe it’s because baked goods are a top-of-mind donation item in schools. As a small business, it's simply impossible to say yes to every single donation request, as baking is literally our business model, so I had to ask myself what I feel most strongly about in terms of causes. Donating Sweet Diplomacy’s goods to car shows and pet parades, for example, didn’t hit the mark for me. Instead, the answer was simple: I love food and feeding people, as does Chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen. The organization goes to the frontlines worldwide to provide fresh meals to people in need during crises. I currently can't participate in the field with them, but donating a portion of our earnings to them seems an appropriate way to bless their organizational mission.
LP: Do you have any newly released baked goods, and/or anything upcoming for 2025?
MH: Over the past years, it seems that Sweet Diplomacy has grown up from just an idea in my mind to its own entity. I started selling baked goods in little pop-up stands and then in local coffee shops, then I opened our brick-and-mortar location right before the global pandemic, then we started the e-commerce venture right after a city-wide fire that could have destroyed our commercial kitchen and warehouse. It's been an amazing roller-coaster ride, and I never know what might be coming around the corner.
If it were up to only me, the next goal would be to launch our top-selling allergen-free cookies and brownies into retail CPG so more people can enjoy our lovingly-made food that caters to all sorts of special diets. But we'll see how this all unfolds. All I want to do is to spread more love and joy in this world!
