Hundreds of people rallied around a bakery that lost followers after sharing their new Pride cookies.
On June 2, Confections, a business in Lufkin, Texas, marked Pride month by sharing an image of their new heart-shaped rainbow cookies.
The captioned the shot: "More LOVE. Less hate. Happy Pride to all our LGBTQ friends! All lovers of cookies and happiness are welcome here."
The following day, however, the bakery, run by sisters Dawn and Miranda, had some bad news to share - they had lost a "significant" number of followers in the aftermath of their Pride post.
They wrote: "Today has been hard. Really hard. We lost a significant amount of followers because of a rainbow heart cookie we posted.
"We received a very hateful message on our business page canceling a large order (5dz) of summer-themed cookies for tomorrow morning (that we just finished decorating) because of a rainbow heart cookie we posted."
The post added: "My heart is heavy. Honestly, I never thought a post that literally said more love less hate would result in this kind of backlash to a very small business that is struggling to stay afloat and spread a little cheer through baked goods."
The bakery then encouraged their followers to pop around if they wanted to get their hands on the excess cookies they were left with following the canceled order.
They concluded: "So. If you love our cookies we will have an overabundance of them tomorrow. Hopefully, tomorrow will be better."
The post went viral and has since racked up over 12,000 reactions, 1,600 comments, and 2,200 shares at the time of writing.
Loyal customers and LGBTQ+ advocates turned up to the store in their hundreds the next day:
What's more, the business managed to sell out on all of its stock:
Taking to Facebook once more to thank their incredible customers, Confections wrote: "Y’all. We are astonished at your generosity of heart. The line is wrapped around the street since we opened."
They concluded: "We will be CLOSING TODAY one hour early at 4:00 to rebake and regroup for tomorrow as we are close to being sold out. We will be OPEN SATURDAY 11-2 with more of everything, including the rainbow heart that started it all."
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