Community Highlights: Meet Marissa Moretti of Dough Babe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marissa Moretti.

Hi Marissa, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’ve been wanting to start my cookie business since I baked cookies from scratch with my best friend when she came to visit me in college. That was a long time ago…shhh 😉

It started my baking craze and I tried to bake all kinds of things and cookies were the one thing I kept coming back to and wanting to perfect. A cookie fits all contexts and is such an easy comfort grab.

Throughout the years, I baked cookies for my friends and coworkers, but never thought I’d make a real go of it because it wasn’t practical to replace my tech salary. But then in 2021, when I lived in Austin, TX, I got a logo made and thought I’d give it a go, but then I met my partner, now husband, and got distracted for a few years.

The push came in 2025 after five years of grinding at tech startups and the existential questioning the pandemic brought had caught up with me. I woke up one day and realized that the “safe” route was costing me too much. I was chronically stressed and my hair had started falling out so I knew something had to change. I’d love to say that cookies were the first option I thought of, but I actually got my real estate license to be an apartment locator to get to know the city better and maybe meet some people and have real life coworkers again. I got my license in a couple weeks, started my training for the job, and quit within the first 2 weeks of starting because it felt like more of the same corporate grind, but without any of the benefits of a salary, health insurance, PTO, etc. So I instinctually felt it wasn’t the right fit for me.

I was following up on some real estate leads when I just had an overwhelming feeling that I really wanted to give the cookie thing a shot because if I didn’t do it now, I might never do it. So I signed up for Canva and made a logo, signed up for TikTok and grabbed my IG handle and I was off to the races. I didn’t realize it then, but I was about to get schooled in baking thanks to high altitude. I tested for weeks and weeks and had so many failed batches until I finally nailed the chocolate chip cookie I was ready to sell.

Fast forward 8 months and we’re becoming Denver’s favorite cookie and way to tell someone you love and thought about them (or yourself). I’m loving nurturing my creativity and coming up with new cookies and recipes. I love making something with my hands and while entrepreneurship has its challenges it is the happiest I’ve ever been and it’s been such an incredible vehicle for personal growth too. I’m currently rebranding the company from Baked by Snooks (my sweet, sweet dog) to Dough Babe. And I’m so excited for what’s in store for Dough Babe this year. We’ve already done some larger corporate events tying the cookies into the larger message that the leaders want folks to take away from the event and and it’s been an absolute hit!

I’ve also got a digital Cookie Masterclass coming out in March so anyone can learn to make cookies just like mine. And if you want to learn to bake in your own house, I offer in-home experiences so you can do every part of the process hands on and be the envy of all your friends. Great as a gift, girls night, or a date night!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Hahaha! Is entrepreneurship ever a smooth road? Funnily enough, I jumpstarted my tech career working for a tech startup incubator and thought I knew so much about the experience of entrepreneurship going into it and holy shit was I wrong!

Initially, I thought I’d be able to follow the influencer route and just sell cookies by posting on social media so I did that for about 6 weeks with zero sales outside the initial push from all my friends when I launched. So then I realized I needed to hit the streets and start participating in events. I started with a couple of small farmers markets and then decided to dive into the deep end and do Denver Oktoberfest, a 6-day festival over 2 weekends with ~200k attendees, and run the booth solo 95% of the time.

Preparing for Denver Oktoberfest by myself was one of the biggest undertakings I had done with zero professional bakery experience so I was learning to use commercial mixers and ovens while also trying to optimize my process in the kitchen. I spent 17 hours a day for 4 days with very little breaks. My feet ached so bad I couldn’t sleep even after soaking them in epsom salt and popping Advil like it’s candy. I suffered many severe burns during this time because that kitchen gets hot in the summer with the ovens on so short sleeves are necessary (but stupid). BUT I still live to tell the tale. I made and packaged 1,000 cookies all by myself for the event. I ran the tent solo with a friend popping by for a few hours a couple of the days.

I did some smaller day-festivals on Tennyson and Highlands and saw some great success there so it helped me feel like I had some proof of concept.

Through these events, I learned a TON about sales, booth setup, flavors people really love, and the importance of building relationships with other vendors.

The biggest challenge I never thought I’d face: figuring out how and where to sell cookies. In some level of naivety, I thought everyone wants cookies, how hard could it be? Hahahaha! You have to take time to work on and in your business and have the courage to adjust quickly when things don’t work. Also getting comfortable with going from having 1 full-time job to 7 full-time jobs has been quite the challenge. I’m a generalist, but I am not a marketer or content creator so I’ve had to learn and lean into areas where I don’t feel super competent or have a lot of interest.

My newest challenge is learning to stick out in a sea of other bakers who are making amazing products. This is why Dough Babe is now coming to life.

We’ve been impressed with Dough Babe, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Dough Babe is built around one belief: cookies should feel like an experience, not an afterthought.

We don’t have a storefront on purpose. Instead, we do a weekly pre-order so I can bake everything fresh and not let cookies sit around hoping someone adopts them. When they sell out, they’re gone until the next pre-order. People plan around it, split boxes with friends, and occasionally message me like they missed concert tickets.

Everything revolves around texture actually matching expectations. I make nostalgic flavors, but elevated so they taste the way you remember them in your head, but even better. I obsess over butter quality, chocolate quality, resting dough, all the weird details that determine whether a cookie is incredible or disappointing. My unofficial rule is simple: they bend, never snap!

Not having a case full all day also gives me room to play with rotating flavors, seasonal ideas, experiments that wouldn’t exist in a traditional bakery. I love this operating model and have no plans to have a storefront at this point.

Brand-wise, I’m most proud that Dough Babe feels like me. I’m aggressively pro-quality and probably care too much about things you’ll never see, but you’ll taste them. I’m not trying to be the biggest bakery in Denver, I just want to be the box you get for yourself after a long week, send to say thank you to someone you love, or bring somewhere because you know it’ll land.

At the end of the day my cookies are just the vessels of love I want to put into the world. If your first reaction is texting someone “I shouldn’t eat this whole box but I might,” then I did my job.

Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Honestly, luck hasn’t played a huge role so far — at least not in the cinematic “overnight success” way. Most of building this has just been consistency and continuing to show up on days where quitting would have been much easier.

Running a small business has a lot of quiet weeks. You post, bake, plan, improve things no one notices yet, and repeat it long before it feels like momentum exists. From the outside people often assume something suddenly takes off, but the reality is you spend a long time building the foundation for a moment that hasn’t happened yet.

I do feel like I’m standing right on the edge of a lucky break, but the part you can control is being ready for it when it shows up. So most of my focus has been less on waiting for luck and more on making sure when opportunity finds me, the product and brand actually deserve it.

Pricing:

• $5 per cookie (any flavor)
• $50 per dozen
• $150 in-home cookie masterclass for 2 people including ingredients
• $47 for digital cookie masterclass

Contact Info:

• Website: https://doughbabe.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.dough.babe
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@the.dough.babe

Image Credits
Intrepid Creative for the photos of me recording my cookie masterclass