Apr. 5—Kandie Kingery comes home from work and the cookies go in the oven. And then bagels. And then scones. Maybe not in that order.

Kingery also bakes churros, cinnamon rolls, doughnuts, sea foam and pretzels. Baked dog bone treats are coming soon.

"The churros sell out real quick," Kingery said one late afternoon while tending to a tray of freshly baked bagels.

Kingery launched Bite Me Bakery in January as a Glorieta home-based business with online ordering and a Saturday pop-up location in front of the shut-down Adelo's store in Pecos.

"If you want churros, you gotta be waiting for me [for her 9 a.m. Saturday opening]," she said.

Kingery is among the increasing number of Americans who have started retail businesses without a storefront during the pandemic.

Restaurants were the most high-profile industry to adopt — and survive with — the pickup and delivery model of business. But the concept has spread across the business sectors.

"The pandemic has accelerated new ways of doing business in ways and dimensions we haven't seen before," said Reilly S. White, associate professor of finance at the University of New Mexico. "Business creation has never been easier."

Kingery tapped into the state's cottage food law, the Homemade Food Act (House Bill 177) of 2021, which allows home food producers to sell most nonperishable food — "anything that has a shelf life," Kingery explains it — directly to customers with no sales limit and no need to resort to a commercial kitchen.

Kingery's primary motivation is to provide bakery goods for Pecos and Glorieta, especially for the morning commute. She tested the community's appetite with a "Do you want a bakery?" post on four Pecos Facebook groups, including Pecos Cares and Mi Querido Pecos.

"I always thought we need a bakery here," she said. "In January, I said, why wait?"

Kingery takes orders online at nmbite.com, and customers pick up their orders from 7 to 9 a.m. outside Dairy Queen in Pecos, where she has her day job from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Her son handles pickup orders for Santa Fe customers at his Lithia Chrysler Jeep Dodge job.

Her big day is Saturday, when she offers walk-up sales in front of the empty Adelo's store in Pecos from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and makes upward of $500. "That's a car payment," she noted.

For Saturdays, she bakes four dozen each of bagels, cinnamon rolls, doughnuts, churros and chocolate chip cookies.

"If I don't have chocolate chip cookies, I get the stink eye," Kingery said. "Sometimes on Friday I don't get any sleep. I bake all night."

Kingery has had a bakery in mind since moving to Glorieta in 1999 from Bellevue, Wash. She has worked off and on at the Dairy Queen in Pecos for 12 years but has also worked four years at the Legislature and for four years had a mail-order business making horse fly masks.

"Shipping and COVID messed that up," she said.

The pandemic has flipped the business world topsy-turvy. One slice of that is the so-called Great Resignation: people leaving jobs in droves and not going back to the same job, finding a new, likely better-paying job — or starting their own business.

"We have seen a 70 percent increase in first-time entrepreneurs starting businesses from home," UNM's White said. "New business applications are up 39.8 percent (from February 2020 to February 2022), and about 50 percent of new businesses are home-based."

Kingery is already thinking ahead for Bite Me Bakery. The first addition is a product line for dogs.

Drive-up Dairy Queen customers often travel with dogs. Kingery has created dog bone treats made with sweet potato purée and whole wheat.

"That came about recently. I'm a huge animal lover," said Kingery, who has a home menagerie of five peacocks, six turkeys, four horses and two goats. "I want to give animals a treat at DQ, but the boss says no, no, no."

If popularity grows for Bite Me Bakery, Kingery can see expanding her business.

"My goal is to get a slice of land for a little drive-thru or get a food truck," she said. "It could be a horse trailer conversion."

The Santa Fe Bulletin Board and Santa Fe Foodies Facebook pages are rife with despondent comments about the bagel scene in Santa Fe. Kingery dared to make bagels and, she said, they are a surprising best-seller.

Doughnuts do well, too.

"I have one customer who says: 'We now know how many miles we will drive for a doughnut: 27,' " Kingery said.