My Donut Business.com

Archive for the ‘donut recipes’ Category

Ed Chastain from Donut Dvd (who by the way sells an excellent product) shared a cute video with us.... be sure to check out his website by clicking on the banner below this post....

We are going to be testing out various donut recipes that we sell on the website... we will be learning and tasting the recipes from the product we sell on our website... DonuteDVD

So you are wondering where to find donut recipes for you new business?  View the video for a very good idea.  You don't have to reinvent the wheel or invest in an expensive franchise to get "secret" donut recipes.....

GET PROVEN DONUT RECIPES HERE, CHECK THIS OUT!

We have talked before in previous posts about trying different things in your donut business. Questions come up like should I sell coffee? Should I sell milk? Should I sell coffee? Should I sell orange juice? Each one of these has its disadvantages and advantages, just like selling anything else. You need to consider the overhead that each one will give you and the profit that each one could give you as well. You may, depending on the location, be better off just sticking to selling your doughnuts alone without anything else accompanying them. But there are situations where selling drinks could be beneficial.

I think we mentioned this before, we were in San Francisco on Pier 59 I believe (I'm not sure of the exact number) And there was a small doughnut shop on the Pier. It had been there a few years before and I assume that it is still there now. They seem to do very well, even though it was a slow time of year and the traffic was down. There were not a lot of people on that here, buying anything. But the little doughnuts shop had a steady flow of traffic buying their doughnuts. I thought it was very interesting, and that we had seen the doughnut shop before it was not until a year later that we had the idea to have one of our own. But one thing that we noticed is they did not sell any beverages except coffee. They sold a mini bag of doughnuts with about Half a dozen in each bag for three dollars. My partner and I absolutely loved them. Wow, it makes me want to go back to San Francisco, the two of us. We had such a good time, it really brings back good memories.

Anyway, back to trying different things in your donut business. If you have a stand-alone store and offer multiple varieties Of doughnuts, like the big chains, then of course it will be necessary for you to have drinks. He not only will have to have coffee, but you will probably have to have orange juice sodas and other drinks people enjoy in your area. By the same token if you have a large store then you probably won't need multiple varities of donuts. This is just not our business model, we are selling small doughnuts without drinks. Perhaps in the future we can offer a bigger menu. But for us this works out very well. Try different things in your donut business will be depend on your resources, venue and your audience, it is pretty much that simple.

Having a good donut recipe is important when you first start your donut business. There are many options when you come to this situation. You will need to have a basic donut recipe before you start your business. You may want to look on the Internet and type donut recipe to begin your search. There are many good recipes some good some bad, of course.

We chose to use little orbits recipe that we got off of their website. It actually was not a doughnut recipe but a doughnut mix so that we ordered from their company. It ended up being very good as you can tell from our taste tests in our videos a couple of months ago. We will be trying several different donut recipes in the future and posting them to our blog. We were so impressed with the little orbit's donut recipe That we did not bother to try anything else.

There are several donut recipes on the Internet that we plan on trying in the future. We plan on even making a donut recipes blog so people have somewhere to go to find out more about donut recipes. There's not only a recipe for the donut itself, but recipes for the fillings that go inside of the doughnuts. Some of the fillings are much better than others, as you probably have experienced from going to other doughnut shops. Personally I can really tell a difference in the fillings of different donut shops. If you want to try a very good donut recipe, check out our ad on this blog donutdvd.com. They really guide you on how to start up your donut business And give you training on how what to do. They also give you the all important donut recipe that can be very difficult to find. Is much better to start with something proven, than to try to find something that people like. You may want to check out their website, they have very good donut recipes.

My business partners and I tried another experiment using liquid soybean oil from Sam's and the partially hydroginated soybean oil from Lil Orbits. It should be noted that the ingrediants for each were the same according to the nutritonal labels, but the amounts of each ingrediant were not stipulated. So, exactly how much citric acid is in there? Does it really matter? Who knows. There was one glaring difference between the oils, however. The Lil Orbits oil contained transfat while the Sam's oil did not. I guess you could say we were trying to make healthy donuts with the Sam's oil! Okay, maybe not. But, we were interested to see it there was a taste difference.
We started with the Sam's oil, and I made a small mistake in preparing the batter. Two weeks ago during our last taste test session we noted that if prepared exactly to the directions the batter set up quickly. This made it too thick to pour through the applicator. I noted the same consistency again and added a bit more water to the batter to thin it out. Apparently, I added too much as the batter became too stringy. Ugh! Frustrating! So much for finding a happy medium.
Instead of coming out in nice rings through the applicator the batter came out in clumps with strings attached. Someone commented that it looked we were deep frying tarantulas. Yum Yum! The cooking time was the same, but more bubbles were noted rising through the batter in the oil kind of like what you see when cooking pancakes. With the thinner batter more tiny pieces were left in the oil follwing the cooking process "dirtying" the oil. Note to self--easy on the water.
Surprisingly, I did notice a taste difference between the oils. We tried both sets of donuts together, some hot and some cold after sitting for an hour. Same results. The donuts made in Lil Orbits oil were slightly better with a pleasant cake-like taste. The donuts cooked in the Sam's oil were a bit heavier and greasier. Even though there was a noticable difference in was only slight, and in my opinion insignificant. When running a business it's a no-brainer that costs must be controlled. Getting oil from Sam's is less expensive than from Lil Orbits mostly because of shipping costs. The Lil Orbits does make a tastier donut, but it would also have to be a more expensive donut to turn a profit. I can say that the donuts we made last time with the pure vegetable oil were my least favorite with the ones being made with the Sam's oil being superior.
My business partners and I plan on videotaping the donut making process next week using our Lil Orbits test kit. Stay tuned!

Per Donnie

The Lil' Orbits taste test kit may have been pricey, but it was worth the opportunity to try the donuts first hand. They are really delightful. They must be hard to screw up because we didn't, he he. We did not perfect the use of the little batter dropper that was included. Our donuts looked rather odd, but they were quite tasty. We had comparison products from our local convenience store: Dolly Madison Mini Donuts (cake with powdered sugar; $0.75/six) and off-the shelf Krispy Kreme Donut holes ($1.79 for five). Our warm Lil' Orbits beat them hands down. The aroma filled our kitchen. We made some with the partially hydrogenated soybean oil provided and some others were cooked in Kroger brand Vegetable oil. There was a definite unpleasant after-taste to be had with the alternative oil, and the donuts cooked in that oil were greasy.

The experiment sold us on the Lil' Orbit batter. They were the best donuts I had ever eaten. We plan on testing partially hydrogenated soybean oil obtained locally against the Lil Orbits brand oil.

There are many benefits to having a doughnut business. We are focusing on the small doughnut business, and not the franchise donut business model. The franchise donut business model Is not an effective way to sell small doughnuts, which typically are just one product. People who sell small doughnuts may sell milk, coffee or a different flavor donut but that is the extent of what they sell.

One good thing about the doughnut business are the low startup costs. You can typically buy the equipment anywhere from $5000-$20,000, depending on the route you want to go. If you just want a small fryer to set up shop at flea markets or even in your kitchen selling doughnuts, then you can get by with investing $5000 or less. If you want a concession type stand for your doughnut business then you will spend $20,000 or more on start up cost. Donut stands are good if you are selling your doughnuts at festivals, fairs, carnivals, sporting events or any other outdoor activity. Having a doughnut concession stand is a good way to generate a lot of revenue very quickly.

Doughnuts sell! As long as you have a crowd or an audience for your doughnuts, they will pretty much sell themselves. It is hard to avoid the smell of the doughnut, this is what gets them to your stand. Once they are there people can barely resist buying your doughnuts. The overhead is low for making doughnuts. You will have very little cost on the ingredients and equipment. The return on investment can be quite high.

If you can find a good place to sell your doughnuts, with a lot of traffic, you will make money. You will need to keep in mind the rent you are paying and how much you pay your employees for their time. As with all business endeavors, you will need to keep check of all expenses. Another thing that you will need to find, is a good donut recipe. You can try the recipes that can be found on the banner below this post, that website also will teach you how to start and operate your donut business. It is an excellent way to get the support and ideas from someone without having to purchase a franchise. It is well worth the money to invest in the system.

Below is our first test of the Lil Orbits Donut Recipe, something we are considering going with.... The video is not the best quality but wanted to give everyone an idea of what we are up to... Bob recorded the video with his iphone... using a tool called qik.com Really pretty cool..... We are going to do the taste test again and record it, this time a little better quality. We weren't really prepared for this taste test, next time we will be. Thanks for all the comments, We are slowly but surely getting this off the ground.... The video is about 10 minutes in length... thanks for all the nice emails we have received about the blog, it has been awhile in the making....