Texas Bakery Goes Viral After Heart-Shaped Rainbow Pride Cookies Led to Backlash

A heart-shaped cookie with rainbow icing sounds pretty innocuous. But a social media photo featuring that exact item sent a Texas bakery on a rollercoaster of a week after they used the goodies to wish patrons a "Happy Pride."

On June 2, Confections Bakery in Lufkin turned to Facebook to show off their colorful heart cookies and post a message in honor of the start of LGBTQ+ Pride Month. "More LOVE. Less hate," the post began. "Happy Pride to all our LGBTQ friends! All lovers of cookies and happiness are welcome here."

Twenty-four hours later, however, the mood had shifted. "Today has been hard. Really hard," a follow up post began. The bakery explained they had lost "a significant amount" of followers after the post, and, even worse, received "a very hateful message" canceling an order that had already been baked and decorated. "My heart is heavy. Honestly I never thought a post that literally said more love less hate would result in this kind of backlash," the post continued. "If you love our cookies we will have an over abundance of them tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow will be better."

Beyond better, the response was overwhelming. As word began to spread, Confections was sent what they called "an outpouring of love" with so many "sweet words of support posted, messaged and emailed [that] it may take us a while to get through them all." By noon on Friday, a line had formed down the street. The shop had to close early because everything was sold out.

The story was the same on Saturday: another complete sellout. "All this attention on our small business is very humbling. Makes me nervous! Those who know me (Dawn) know how shy I am. In the 11 years we've been open we've never seen anything quite like this," the owner posted on Facebook. "We (my sister and co-owner Miranda and our fabulous baker Felicia) are just so humbled and grateful and moved by this outpouring of love. The last several people in our shop put Money on their credit card for us to donate because there was nothing left to purchase."

With this whirlwind less than a week old, the long-term effect this unexpected outpouring will have on Confection as a business is unclear. The bakery has posted that they are looking into offering shipping to reach far-flung supporters beyond East Texas, and they're hoping to set up a system for those who "want to buy cookies and donate to our local nursing homes and charities."

But the larger take away is clear: In the never-ending battle between love and hate, once again there was more love and less hate. Why would anyone hate a cookie anyway?