How I did it

(Money Magazine) -- By Christyne Laplaca. As Told to Ingrid Tharasook.

On Christmas Day of 1996, I fed my three-year-old a piece of chocolate. One hour later, Rebecca was in an ER, diagnosed with a potentially fatal nut allergy.

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More than 3 million people have some sort of peanut allergy, and half of them also have a tree-nut allergy.

I spent the next seven years lobbying for stricter food labeling and met hundreds of parents who wanted to buy a safe, nut-free product.

That's when I realized there was business potential for a cookie company that guarantees no nut contamination. So in the winter of 2003 I established Rebecca's Nut-Free.

It wasn't easy. I knew little about cooking. I tweaked a neighbor's family recipe and test-marketed it by handing out samples. Most food start-ups can rent a commercial kitchen, but we couldn't run the risk of cross-contamination.

I baked at home at first, but I needed more space to keep up with demand. So I coughed up a large portion of our savings to build a $100,000 commercial kitchen and get my idea off the ground. Half came from an inheritance, and half came from my husband's salary as an engineer.

In the fall of 2005 I launched a website for Rebecca's Nut-Free. Since then, revenue has shot up 300%. We just reached the break-even point this past June, and now we're putting everything we make back in the business. I plan to keep growing.