Man or woman can’t live by bread alone — gotta be home-baked cookies and a beverage, too.

And as far as the founder of Amy’s Cookies in Auburn is concerned, no beverage pairs better with the cookies that carry her name than freshly roasted coffee.

As a matter of fact, Amy Skogen has been serving up both at Pacific Northwest Coffee on the northeast corner of the Auburn Transit Station garage since November 2022, when she bought PNW from then-owners Connie Krier and Jenniffer Trinidad and relocated her cookie-baking business to there. Amy’s Cookies were formerly made in Maple Valley.

“Everything we offer is made right here from scratch,” said Skogen. “We’re working on a new menu for spring and summer. I specialize in hand-made sugar cookies, which was my niche before the coffee shop.”

In addition to varieties of hand-crafted coffee roasted by Milano, Skogen offers a full breakfast and lunch menu, a special-of-the-day, freshly-baked bread, banana bread, drop cookies, muffins and classic best sellers like chocolate chip cookies.

She’s doing a brisk business, too, she said, which has been racheting up the brisk since the arrival of warmer weather.

All of this is a far cry from the career she’d envisioned when she was growing up in the Kent-Covington-Maple Valley area as Amy McReady.

“I wanted to be an Emergency Medical Technician,” Skogen said.

Her ambition changed when she met and married Ken Skogen.

“I was young when we started having kids, and we had a lot of children. And everything my kids ate growing up was home-cooked because we were poor. We got nothing out of a box. I started baking because we couldn’t afford the pies or cakes or cookies or any of those things,” Skogen said.

The couple did foster care as well and baked for all the kids.

When she got Amy’s Cookies going three years ago, she began renting space in a Maple Valley bakery.

“We opened just in front of the pandemic, and it worked out in a very good way for me. I kind of shifted gears and did DYI cookie kits for people. People felt really guilty because they weren’t able to have lavish parties for their kids, so they spent money on treats and cookies,” Skogen said.

Skogen came to Auburn because her business had outgrown the space she’d been renting.

“I kinda needed more room,” Skogen said. “What I originally planned to do was a start-up of another bakery. I happened to Google businesses for sale in the area, and this was one of first things to pop up. It had 100 percent everything that I needed.”

When Skogen’s not up to her elbows in cookie dough, she loves hanging out with her kids, and her new granddaughter, Wrenlee, all of four months old. Skogen is also an avid hiker, and in the summer months, you’ll probably find her with her family, chilling out on some mountain or near a lake.

“I am also very clumsy. There may or may not be some video out there of me falling on my rear end in a café,” Skogen said with a laugh.

PNW is open Mondays to Fridays from 5:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“I hope to extend the business hours,” Skogen said.