When Becky Woodbridge moved to Durango a year an a half ago, she had trouble baking. A lifelong cook, she played around with recipes until one night, while she was making cookies for her daughter, she stumbled onto an incredible recipe.
“I went, ‘Wow, this is good.’ And then I said, ‘It’s gotta be a fluke.’ I made it again, and I was like, ‘Holy cow, this is bitchin’,” she said. And thus, a business was born.
Bitchin’ Cookies, which can be found at the Durango and Kennebec farmers markets, wholesale in several Durango businesses and online, is the cookie arm of Woodbridge’s “Bitch Empire.” Her motivational speaker and life-coaching business is named Sky Bitch – she was a flight attendant for 30 years before retiring in 2016 – and she owns 87 domain names with the word “bitchin’” or “badass” in the name. She has also given a TEDx talk on how the word “bitch” can be empowering.
Eventually, she said, she’d like to produce an entire line of food items under one Durango-based company. But for now, there’s cookies.
Woodbridge said her focus is on making a good, holistic cookie from organic ingredients and without chemicals found in other foods.
“I think what makes me different is that I’m producing a cookie that is out of this world,” she said. “I don’t compromise on my taste – and that’s gourmet taste at a gourmet price.”
In addition to other foods (Durangoans may see Bitchin Pies in the near future), Woodbridge experiments with new cookies. She has a “cookie of the month” – most recently toffee caramel – and she is in the testing phase of a CBD-oil cookie.
Woodbridge said the Durango Farmers Market, where her cookies almost always sell out before closing, was the best platform to launch her business.
“I would not be doing what I’m doing today if it wasn’t for the farmers market,” she said.
She has also picked up on certain trends at the market, such as that men really love cookies.
“What I surmise ... is it’s that smell of your mom, when you’re a little kid waiting for the cookies to come out of the oven. And its associated with love and care and compassion and their mother. And I swear it has a correlation,” she said.
ngonzales@durangoherald.com
