I started a cookie business and scaled too quickly. We got caught up in a growth-at-all-costs mentality — here's how I turned it around.

Partake Foods founder, Denise Woodard, says storytelling has been a big part of her company's success.

Denise Woodard Denise Woodard founded Partake Foods after her daughter's life-threatening food allergies.

She says expanding too far, too wide, too fast in 2020 was almost deadly to the business.

Woodard has raised millions in funding and credits storytelling for her success.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Denise Woodard, founder and CEO of Partake Foods.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I spent my career in consumer packaged goods and spent significant time at The Coca-Cola Company.

Then my daughter Vivienne came along.

She's 11 now, but right around her first birthday, we had a couple of scary incidents that alerted us to the fact that she had multiple life-threatening food allergies .

She was allergic to foods I consider to be super simple: eggs, tree nuts, bananas, and sesame.

I started to realize that food allergies were going to become a big part of our everyday lives.

I was really frustrated with the options from a taste and nutritional perspective.

Most of all, I thought about how, emotionally, she wouldn't be able to partake in so many social events like birthday parties, playdates, and school snack time, and that she'd always feel excluded and othered.

I wanted to create a solution for that.