When Daniel Koas and Talia Rudee met for their second date, Talia brought along a gift to share—homemade hamantaschen. The cookies nearly ended their relationship before it ever started.
“I was 30 days into a sugar fast,” recalls Daniel. “But I didn’t want to tell her because I didn’t want to screw up the date.”
“If he had told me about the sugar fast, I would have been skeptical about a future together, because dessert is my favorite thing,” adds Talia. “But he did eat my cookies.”
“It was worth it because they were delicious,” laughs Daniel. “There are no more sugar fasts because now, I have to test our products.”
Seven years later and 1,800 miles away from that first date, Daniel and Talia—now married—have turned Talia’s baking into a successful business—“Talia’s Bakery.” They sell challah, babka, scones, muffins, cookies and all sorts of baked goods around the metro area. Through coffee shops, farmers markets, grocery stores, special orders, and regular customers, they are spreading goodwill and youthful enthusiasm for Jewish culture to everyone they meet.
“Our first goal was to serve the Jewish community with quality challah every Friday,” says Daniel. “But the second part of our mission is to make challah more mainstream, sharing our Jewish heritage with others.”
‘We could sell this!’
When they met in New York City, Talia was working for an environmental nonprofit and Daniel was transitioning from a position with a Jewish nonprofit to a new job planning events and conferences. Then, COVID hit, and the two started working remotely and taking more weekend trips to get out of the city. The weekend trips eventually evolved into an entirely new plan to leave New York and travel to different parts of the country, living in one Airbnb after another and working remotely.
Eventually, they spent time with Talia’s cousins in Littleton, and that led to an “Aha” moment.
“We could see that we could build a life here,” Talia says. “We went back to New York, closed down our lives there, and moved to Denver, still working remotely.”
In Denver, Talia took a job working for the City and County of Denver at Denver International Airport. Now settled in one place with her own kitchen, she started baking again. For the most part, she relied on family recipes. She remembers her very first experience making challah was in JCC preschool, but she developed expertise under her mother’s guidance. In college, she baked and sold challah through the organization Challah for Hunger.
“I never thought of it as a business,” she says. “It was a passion project.”
But in Denver, Daniel began to see Talia’s skills and talent in a new light.
“One day, I said ‘Wait a minute, I think there’s something here—we could sell this!’” says Daniel. “In my mind, we could maybe turn it into something where we would make an extra $100 a month.”
On the day we visited Talia and Daniel in their commercial kitchen in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, they were rushing to fulfill a last-minute special order of multiple mini-challahs for University of Denver Hillel. They have come a long way from Daniel’s original vision of earning a little extra spending money. How they got there is a classic tale of young entrepreneurs who learned how to build the plane while they were flying it.
‘Our dream is taking challah everywhere’
“We started in the smallest possible way,” says Daniel.
Talia baked and they sold to friends, neighbors, and through Facebook. The business grew through word of mouth, especially, Daniel says, among people who found grocery store challahs to be subpar. The feedback they received was overwhelmingly positive, so they started to think about the next step—selling at the City Park Farmer’s Market in summer of 2024.
“We were excited but nervous,” Talia recalls. “Everyone had their tents and tables and seemed so legitimate.”
They moved the business out of their home kitchen to a licensed facility they rented on Fridays. In the new kitchen, Talia started experimenting, creating mini-challahs that are stuffed—with apples, or cinnamon-sugar, or Nutella, or rosemary garlic, or jalapeno cheddar. They added Sundays at South Pearl Street Farmers Market. Talia also created a delicious individual babka. At both farmers markets, Talia received real-time feedback on her efforts to take challah mainstream—including the fact that people preferred Nutella over chocolate chips in their challah.
By the end of 2024, Daniel and Talia moved into their own full-time kitchen where they use Kosher ingredients in a vegetarian kitchen. They added five part-time employees to help, and with personal marketing, moved their products into coffee shops and multiple small grocery stores, including Lucky’s Market in Boulder. They also take orders for private clients and special events.
Over time, a division of labor emerged. Daniel describes himself as “an eater, not a baker” so he helps out in the kitchen, but he has taken on business duties, including delivery runs. By September of 2025, both Daniel and Talia had left their full-time regular jobs to devote themselves to building their business.
“We didn’t really love a 9-5 work schedule,” Talia says. “Yes, we work more hours now, but it’s different. This feels more like our baby because we are in it together, we talk about the business all the time, the stakes are higher, and we want to make it as big as we can.”
“It’s lots of early mornings together and sometimes it’s challenging,” adds Daniel. “But it has brought us closer.”
Talia and Daniel believe they have also made great strides toward accomplishing their mission.
“The farmers markets are highlights for us because we meet people who are passionate about our products,” says Daniel. “We give samples, and we teach people what challah and babka are.”
“It’s a way to educate people and make challah a household word,” adds Talia. “Everyone knows what a bagel is. Our dream is taking challah everywhere—just like a bagel.”