It was a little before 11 p.m. on a Wednesday, and a group of friends stood under dim lights and magenta walls at Ashleigh Bakes Daily, staring down rows of oversized, freshly baked cookies.
“It’s so hard to choose,” one said.
“Y’all did a great job,” owner Ashleigh Ratchford told them once they finally placed their order.
For Ratchford, 40, nights like this were years in the making. After dreaming of having her own space downtown, she’s finally making it happen.
Ratchford opened the second-floor bakery at 111 W. Main St. on June 19, Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
“I thought it would be fitting for me to be able to open my space on a holiday like that,” she said, reflecting on the importance of her Black heritage.
In six years, the business has done nothing but grow, she said, but it never had a kitchen of its own.
“One of the issues was always that I didn’t have anywhere of my own to bake,” she said. “In order for me to do that, I had to decide to just try.”
Built by hand, with help
The Main Street space was a former office, with bright white walls and grimy ceiling panels. Without money to hire help, Ratchford did much of the work of transforming it herself.
“My homegirls and I put the flooring down,” she said. “I put all the cabinets together myself.”
Gonzalez Painters & Contractors, a family-owned company based in Durham, painted the whole space for free. When Ratchford saw the finished job, she cried for about 30 minutes.
“To have had a vision for something, and then to be able to walk into it, it’s a wild feeling,” she said. “I can never say I did it all by myself, because my community steps up a lot when I need them.”
Every detail was chosen to feel like home, from the wooden countertops to the pink accents.
“I wanted it to feel like you were coming into a comfortable house that you come to all the time,” Ratchford said.
Not your average cookie
Every cookie is mixed by hand. Once the dough is tacky enough to hold together, Ratchford puts down the spoon and finishes by hand.
“I’m gonna know when it’s done, versus the spoon knowing,” she said.
She started the business during the COVID-19 pandemic, with two daughters at home. One Valentine’s Day, inspired by Target’s holiday candy aisle, she began experimenting.
“Once I figured out that I was good at putting things together, I just never stopped,” she said.
Because food businesses were considered essential during the pandemic, she got her start by partnering with places that were still open. Later, she spent a year in a pop-up incubator space down the street before moving into her new home in June.
Today’s lineup includes a Cinnamon Toast Crunch cookie and a Fruity Pebbles stuffed cookie, each tasting like its cereal namesake, alongside flavors like dark chocolate obsession, maple cinnamon loaf, birthday cake, double chocolate chip and cookies and cream.
The stuffed flavors change daily. On Wednesday, it was a Teddy Graham s’mores cookie with a gooey center. Sometimes the red velvet has a whole Oreo inside, and sometimes it doesn’t. A lemon blueberry might show up one day and not come back for a year. That unpredictability is part of the draw: there’s always a reason to come back and see what’s new.
Opening day was so busy that the bakery kept running out of stock, and Ratchford baked to order. “I felt like I got to do what I love to do all day long,” she said.
Kayla Richardson, a Durham teacher who had visited the old location, came back Wednesday night with two friends because she needed dessert. She likes the late hours and the indulgent cookies.
“It’s local. It feels personal,” she said.
Choosing the hard thing
Ratchford opened with little financial cushion.
“Being Black in this business is hard, ’cause they don’t give you capital,” she said.
Money that could go to payroll, and more rest for her, often goes elsewhere. That costs her time with her daughters, now 7 and 11.
“I would rather be home with my kids most nights, and most nights, I’m here,” she said.
Asked if she ever thinks about giving up, she answered right away: “Every day.”
But she keeps coming back to the same question.
“Do I just want to work harder at doing what I love, or hate what I do all day because that’s hard?” she said.
She has big dreams for the future. She hopes to expand across the building’s second floor and, within 10 years, get a take-home cookie mix into Costco. Until then, the bakery is where she goes when things get hard.
“If I’m having a bad day,” she said, “this is where I come.”
As more of daily life gets automated and franchised, there’s something rare about a cookie mixed by the hands of the woman who hands it to you. It’s a gift neither she nor her customers take for granted.
Photo at top: Ashleigh Ratchford opened her storefront on Main Street in June. Photo by Mia Jean — The 9th Street Journal
Mia Jean
