F&B LA 2019

Dawn Pascale
Founder,
Om Sweet Home


DawnPascale is founder of Om Sweet Home, a specialty bakery that focuses on plant-based and gluten-free pastries, desserts and products. While working as a human resources professional in the financial services industry during 2005, Dawn launched Simply Home Goods, a traditional baked goods company with the mission of delivering simply homemade, made-to-order decadence. When Dawn was laid off from her job at Citigroup in January 2013, she knew that it was time to pursue her passion full time. This led her to register for the Natural Gourmet Institute’s Vegan Baking Bootcamp that was taught by the “queen of vegan desserts”, Chef Fran Costigan. Through the course, she was introduced to baking without dairy, eggs, and any refined sugar products. She saw this as an opportunity to create good-for-you, scrumptious and mindful desserts that appeal to everyone regardless of food sensitivities, allergies, lifestyles and preferences. So she got to work reformulating her Simply Home Goods recipes into vegan and gluten-free creations and launched Om Sweet Home in May 2013. And when she could not find a palm oil-free, vegan butter alternative to use in her products, Dawn decided to make her own. The Om Sweet Home-branded, Non-Dairy Butter Alternative melts, spreads and whips like dairy butter and is free of the top eight food allergens. Dawn uses this unique product in her baked goods and sells it wholesale to a selection of retail clients throughout New York and New Jersey. Over the past four years, Dawn has grown Om Sweet Home from a one person operation, working out of rented commercial kitchen in Hoboken, New Jersey to a team of three pastry chefs with a storefront and commercial baking facility in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. She looks forward to expanding her wholesale baking business and growing Non-Dairy Butter Alternative into a national brand.

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