Doughnuts in good times and bad

FOOD | United States
Despite the crisis,
freshly made food is
good business
Doughnuts
in good times
and bad
Vom Rundfunkmoderator zum Betreiber eines florierenden Cafés: KARIN HOLLY sprach mit
einem Donut-Bäcker aus Florida über einige seiner vierzehn Erfolgsrezepte.
S
tarting a new business is risky, but doing so during
an economic crisis is a real challenge. A man in Fort
Myers, Florida, accepted that challenge, and the coffee and doughnut shop that he opened in 2008 has been
a roaring success. One attraction is the owner himself:
C. David Bennett (real name Bob Grissinger) is a former
radio personality who is famous throughout the area.
Karin Holly visited his shop, Bennett’s Fresh Roast,
to ask him about business and to try his unusual doughnuts.
Karin Holly: You used to be a famous
radio personality. Why did you decide to
sell doughnuts and coffee instead?
Bob Grissinger: Well, it’s funny: when
you reach a certain age, you start to reassess your life. You look back and say,
“We l l ,
what could
I have done
better?”
Unfortunately, other people do
that for you, too. I was
called into the manager’s office at the radio
station and told they
were going to make a
change. I said to myself:
“I know what that
means.” ey gave me a
handsome check, and I
spent about a year and a
half thinking about
what to do with my life.
My brother-in-law
and I had been roasting
coffee for a long time,
Glazed, or maybe with
bacon: a customer takes
time with his order
and we decided to open a coffee shop. We found a piece
of property, bought it, plunked a ton of money into it, and
now we have a very successful shop.
Holly: But didn’t you start the business at a bad time?
Grissinger: e economic recession was at its worst when
we opened in February 2008. But we weren’t going to
walk away from the hundreds of thousands of dollars we
had spent on the project, just because of some bad
economic news.
Holly: You are known for your coffee and
especially for your unusual doughnuts.
Can you tell me about them?
Grissinger: We thought we were going
to have a coffee shop that offered little
pastries of some kind, like the big chains.
But then we thought, “What don’t we
have a lot of anymore in the area? How
about doughnuts?” I’m a purist in cooking,
so I wanted a really good recipe. Lots of people are buying doughnuts frozen and “rethermalizing” them, but we wanted to make them from scratch.
I worked on the recipe for about a year — and made a lot
of friends fatter. ey are still angry with me because they
haven’t been able to lose that weight.
My recipe is not the best for you, but it’s pure — there
are no artificial ingredients in it. e doughnuts contain
buttermilk, eggs, milk, old-fashioned cake yeast, and flour.
Instead of potato flour, we buy Idaho baker potatoes, cook
them, rice them, and add that to the doughnuts.
Holly: What kinds of doughnuts do you make?
Grissinger: We have around
14 different varieties. e
most popular is our
standard
glazed
doughnut, which
is a light, fluffy
cloud of pastry
covered with our
own homemade
glaze. We don’t
Fotos: K. Holly; Thinkstock
buy any glazes, fillings, or icings. We make them all here,
which is unusual for a doughnut shop these days.
Holly: You have some very different doughnuts, too. Did
I see some with bacon on them?
Grissinger: Yes, for those we use a special maple liqueur
made with real maple syrup. We put that on the doughnut,
and then on top we place chunks of Neuske’s applewoodsmoked bacon, which we buy from Wisconsin. It’s
like eating a big American breakfast, with
pancakes with maple syrup and bacon on
the same plate.
Holly: What other kind of doughnuts do you have?
Grissinger: I like our Boston
cream doughnut. We make a
vanilla-bean custard that goes inside, and it’s topped with chocolate.
But my favorite is our doughnut
filled with raspberry jam. It has
almond-liqueur icing on top. at one
makes me smile. It makes my knees
weak. I love that doughnut so much. I eat
one as often as I can afford to, weight-wise. I was
50 pounds lighter when we opened this place. It’s not easy
to lose weight when you’re looking at doughnuts every day
or making them yourself.
Holly: Don’t bakers have to start early in the morning?
Grissinger: To have the doughnuts ready for people at
six o’clock, we start here at three. Making them goes relatively quickly: a batch of doughnuts — say 18 to 20 dozen
— takes about an hour and a half to make.
Holly: e US has a lot of big coffee-shop chains. How
do you survive in a town that has, for example, more than
one Starbucks in it?
Grissinger: A month after we opened, a Starbucks
opened two blocks away — and they closed six months
later. I don’t know that we had a
whole lot to do with that, but
maybe we did! I’ll never badmouth Starbucks, though; they
did an awful lot for coffee. ey
made premium coffee something
that is much more appreciated
than it was before.
Holly: A lot of your
customers
must
know you from
the radio, right?
Grissinger:
Other than
having fresh,
homemade
products, I Owner Bob Grissinger:
think one of nuts about doughnuts
the keys to the success of our shop is that
people know my name. But that doesn’t
give you a lot of credibility when it comes to
making doughnuts and coffee. Still, if you can
get people in the door and they like your products,
then they’ll come back. at’s what happened with us, and
the business has grown every month since we opened. is
year is running about 26 percent ahead of 2010. Last year
ran 34 percent ahead of 2009; 2009 ran 58 percent ahead
of 2008.
Holly: I hear your family is growing, too.
Grissinger: We’re working on adopting a baby girl. At
the age of 57, am I nuts? A lot of people would say I am.
But my partner and I are totally in love with this little
child. We couldn’t be happier.
Holly: She’s going to get some great doughnuts, right?
Grissinger: Never too early to start a kid on doughnuts,
I say. It beats formula every time!
•
almond [(A:lmEnd]
appreciate [E(pri:SieIt]
artificial [)A:rtI(fIS&l]
bacon [(beIkEn]
bad-mouth [(bÄd maUT]
baker potato US
[(beIk&r pE)teItoU]
batch [bÄtS]
brother-in-law [(brVDEr In )lO:]
cake yeast [(keIk ji:st]
chunk [tSVNk]
credibility [)kredE(bIlEti]
flour [(flaU&r]
fluffy [(flVfi]
formula [(fO:rmjElE]
from scratch: make ~
[frVm (skrÄtS]
glaze [gleIz]
handsome [(hÄnsEm]
icing [(aIsIN]
maple liqueur [(meIp&l lI)k§:]
nuts [nVts] ifml.
pastry [(peIstri]
piece of property
[)pi:s Ev (prA:p&rti]
plunk [plVNk] ifml.
raspberry [(rÄz)beri]
reassess [)ri:E(ses]
rethermalize [)ri:(T§:m&laIz] US
rice [raIs] US
Mandel
schätzen
künstlich
(Frühstücks)Speck
herziehen über
Ofenkartoffel
Ladung (→ p. 57)
Schwager
Backhefe
Stück
Glaubwürdigkeit
Mehl
flockig, leicht
Babymilchpulver
vollständig selbst machen
mit einer dünnen Schicht
Zuckerguss überziehen
roaring success
[)rO:rIN sEk(ses]
vanilla-bean custard
[vE)nIlE bi:n (kVst&rd]
weight-wise [(weIt waIz]
ansehnlich
Zuckerguss, Kuchenglasur
Ahornlikör
verrückt
Gebäck
Immobilie
(Geld) hinblättern, investieren
Himbeer
neu überdenken
aufbacken
(Kartoffel) stampfen,
durchpressen
Bombenerfolg
Vanillecreme
gewichtsmäßig, was mein
Gewicht betrifft
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