What is your favorite dessert? Is it a warm chocolate chip cookie? Or maybe it’s pie during the holidays. Whatever it may be, we should be aware that it’s a great privilege to enjoy these things. Not everyone is able to indulge in these delicacies without getting severely sick because of allergies. However, Rani Navarro-Force is passionate about making sure people with allergies can enjoy their favorite treats.

Navarro-Force’s daughter Stephanie got very sick when she was younger, so sick that she couldn’t walk anymore and was in a wheelchair. They had visited many specialists without being able to find the reason her daughter was suffering. One day at the physician’s office, Rani looked down at a medical journal that read “Could Gluten be the Problem?” According to Rani, every symptom her daughter had was listed in this article about gluten when it’s present in the diet of someone who is allergic. The doctors ran allergy tests on Stephanie and discovered she did have a gluten allergy.

Like any mom would do, Rani went to their local grocery store and bought gluten-free food for her daughter. Most of the food, however, was unenjoyable for their family. Rani believed she could make something better, something their whole family could enjoy, while still allowing their daughter to live a healthy, gluten-free lifestyle.

“It took me six months to formulate something that she would actually eat, that everyone would actually eat and thought tasted pretty good,” Navarro-Force said.

Navarro-Force continued developing gluten-free recipes and in 2013 opened her bakery. Queen Marie Gluten Free now wholesales in over 200 stores in eight states.

“We offer a variety of different kinds of baked goods that you can’t find anywhere else,” Navarro-Force said. Many of their grocery-store products are ready-to-bake or ready-to-eat frozen products and they also offer a wide array of gluten-free mixes.

One of their most popular products are the cinnamon rolls. One woman told her she’s eaten them frozen because she gets too anxious to wait for them to thaw! Another popular recipe is the pie crust. “They’ll say ‘I am finally eating a real pie,’” said Navarro-Force about how customers respond to her recipe.

“It’s really nice when I get those compliments, when people call in just to say thank you for taking the time to make the recipe right,” she said.

Along with these favorites Queen Marie Gluten Free offers treats like scones, cookies, pizza crust, hamburger buns, cupcakes and tortillas. On Saturdays they have fresh bread available at their bakery.

A few of the company’s products are available in HyVees across the Midwest. Most of them carry the cinnamon rolls, and then some stores sell cupcakes in different flavors, pie crust and biscuits and gravy.

The bakery offers all the rest of their products, from every single flavor of cupcake to all of the dry mixes.

The wholesale facility and the restaurant are in two different locations. On weekdays, Navarro-Force and her team are at the wholesale facility making their products and then the restaurant is open on Fridays and Saturdays operating as a bakery.

Navarro-Force is always trying out new products in her facility. Whether it’s testing a new product a client requested or experimenting on a classic dish that hasn’t been made gluten-free yet, she’s always having a bit of fun. “Those are the days everybody loves, when we’re just sitting there making new products, seeing how they taste and just trying to get it right,” Navarro-Force said. The company wants to make it easy for people with a gluten allergy to have food available that is actually appetizing, just like Navarro-Force did for her own daughter.

She says there are many reasons people must have gluten-free diets. Her daughter has celiac disease, so when she was living with gluten in her diet, she wasn’t getting the nutrients or minerals she needed. “We really need to be aware of our bodies. A lot of times we really don’t know because we were born with these conditions and we think this is how we’re supposed to feel all the time, and it’s really not,” Navarro-Force said.

Wheat and gluten allergies are often more of an internal reaction, and they don’t always make themselves evident. This makes it hard for people to know whether they have these allergies or not.

When reflecting on how people with these allergies react to Queen Marie Gluten Free, Navarro-Force said, “They love that they can finally eat the stuff that they couldn’t eat.” One day she made a special trip into their bakeshop to give a woman and her son some cupcakes for him to take to a friend’s birthday. “She’s like, ‘He can go now because he can participate,’ and before he couldn’t because he always felt left out,” Navarro-Force said.

Navarro-Force feels that often people create businesses because they think they have a product people will eat, but for her it’s an extension of who she is. “This is something that is near and dear to me,” she said, “I actually eat the things that I make, and I think that’s where a lot of the creativity comes.”

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