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. 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