COLUMBUS, Ohio — You may find bakeries or confectioneries to fix your sweet tooth craving, but one store in central Ohio aims to do much more. 


What You Need To Know

  • Michelle Allen runs a confectionary, which curates to people's needs, including those on the spectrum

  • Allen reveals her unique cooking style and why her inspiration came from her son

  • Allen's MMELO Boutique Confections has been around for six years

The owner has come up with a unique way to produce sweets. 

"We're not trying to make healthy food per se, but we are trying to make real food. This is not junk,” Michelle Allen, owner of MMELO Boutique Confections explained.

Allen crafts pastries, cookies, and chocolates her own way at MMELO.

“We don't use any high fructose corn syrup or corn syrup or any of those things in our recipes," Allen said.

She intentionally excludes those routine ingredients from her recipes, a concept that came to her after her son, Miles Allen Freeth, was diagnosed with autism. Around that time, she began noticing some ingredients would trigger specific behaviors in him. 

"Red dye 40 was one that was an aggravating agent for my son. I noticed in him a marked difference," Allen said.

And she needed answers. 

"I started digging into the way children on the spectrum,” said Allen. “Their systems are very sensitive to the things that are difficult for the body to process. There are dyes and preservations and ingredients that are commonly in our food source that create hyperactivity in children, that create brain fog in women, that create allergic reactions."

Slowly but surely, Allen found a way to curate her cooking—not only for people like her son. 

"For me, it's more than people on the spectrum. We have clients who are celiacs. We have clients with serious nut allergies, and they all trust us to make food for them."

That's all she could ever ask for. 

"At the end of the day, that is what keeps me going,” said Allen. “I love making well-crafted food for a variety of lifestyles that have typically been shut out of the space or haven't had very inspired choices to choose." ​

MMELO Boutique Confections has been around for six years.