Albuquerque has always found innovative ways to get food into the mouths of its hungry citizens. Beyond our city’s tried-and-true restaurants, we’ve all been brought up around burrito ladies who visit office complexes, taco trucks that park outside late-night bars, green chile roasters that set up near freeway offramps. If someone’s making something delicious, we will find it!
Hidden in Albuquerque’s South Valley is a bakery so under-the-radar you may not know it exists and so tiny that you can’t even get inside of it. And yet, it’s bursting with delicious products. Wewadee’s Red Barn Bakery is the brainchild of entrepreneur Lisa Dudasik. Her cottage industry business, Wewadee’s Bakery, has been open since 2023, and Dudasik says cooking has been in her blood her entire life.
“When I was 8 years old I created a play restaurant in our own home kitchen, and I named it ‘Wewadee’s Kitchen.’” explains Dudasik, referencing the childhood nickname her parents gave her. “At the time my father was the general manager of The Black Eyed Pea in Albuquerque, so he would bring me extra things from the restaurant like aprons and ordering books and such. I would make my family members order things from me, and I would make their order in my Wewadee’s Kitchen. I even would use our old-school 1990’s-style video recorder to record VHS tapes with commercials for Wewadee’s Kitchen.”
A stay-at-home mom who homeschools her four children (ages 14, 12, 5 and 2), Dudasik has been delivering her homemade treats for years. But when the family moved to a more remote home near Coors and Isleta, the hustling homemaker decided to install a small bakery stand in their front driveway.
A series of experiments with rolling carts and umbrellas quickly gave up the ghost to New Mexico winds and weather. Eventually, Dudasik and her husband employed red metal sheets from an old barn on the property to construct a small edifice, somewhere between a roadside farmstand and a tiny library. In August of last year, Red Barn Bakery was born.
The micro-sized bakery features baskets of baked goods, a small refrigerator of cold items and a cash box for dropping off payment. (There are also QR codes to check yourself out via Venmo and Apple Pay.)
Red Barn stocks mostly breakfast-style items like blueberry muffins, pancakes, green chile cheese bagels, banana bread, pumpkin bread and (of course) breakfast burritos. The burritos used to be sold from a temperature controlled warmer, but a recent city health inspection found the site wasn’t zoned for hot food, and Dudasik had to move her burritos in the fridge. “I had an inspector come out and tell me that she loves everything about my stand, and I can do everything except breakfast burritos. She was so nice and told me she wanted to buy one because they looked so good.” For now you have to buy the burritos cold and warm them yourself – a small price to pay. Speaking of small prices, most items at Red Barn come in at $5 or under.
In addition to the breakfast foods, Red Barn offers a rotating stock of snack items like cookies, beef jerky and gold bars (a nostalgic, peanut butter-filled childhood favorite anyone who attended an APS school will surely remember).
“I just started making some candies such as chamoy candy and mazapan, which have been a huge hit,” says Dudasik. “Everything I make is from real ingredients. You could go down to Walmart and grab some cookies, but you will also be getting all the extra additives they put in. I feel good providing real whole foods to the community. I’ve had a lot of people who work for delivery companies such as Amazon, Fed Ex, Instacart, Walmart Delivery, etc, comment telling me, ‘Thank you so much. I was delivering in your neighborhood, and I was starving, and it was perfect for me to be able to grab a quick snack.’”
So far, the South Valley community – which lacks nearby restaurants and stores – has been eagerly patronizing Dudasik’s grab-and-go food business. “I am honestly so shocked with how amazing and supportive the community has been. I have received so many amazing comments and messages from customers around the community that they love my baked goods and food items and that everything is amazing. I have had people travel from Rio Rancho, East Mountains and Los Lunas to come visit my Red Barn Bakery.”
As for the future, Dudasik says, “My dream is to have a brick and mortar bakery that is kid friendly. I had my older kids when I was still going to college to become a teacher, and so many times I wished we had a coffee shop where I could have a coffee and a snack and let the kids play while I study. … I would love to have it down in the South Valley as I feel like we need more options down here for both food and kid-friendly places.”
In December Dudasik had a Grinch-themed week filled with holiday treats. In March she plans on having a Dr. Seuss theme in honor of Literacy Week. “My other future plan is to do some community involvement,” explains Dudasik. She imagines, for example, a program that allows kids to eat free one day a week.
On Feb. 8 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Red Barn Bakery will host a Kids Entrepreneur Fair, allowing young cooks, bakers and makers, ages 4 to 17, to sell their homemade items. “We are even being sponsored by the president of the Valencia County Chamber of Commerce who will be helping to support the kids in their entrepreneur adventures,” says Dudasik. “I really want to get the community out to come and support the kids and all of their hard work and shop for some Valentine’s items from our community youth.”
Wewadee’s Red Barn Bakery is located at 2825 Chanate Ave. SW. You can follow them at Facebook at Wewadee’s Bakery.