Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The little doughnut shop that could

By: ANN PERRY - Staff Writer
North County Times (California, USA)


Three years ago, when a Krispy Kreme outlet opened around the corner from her own doughnut shop in Encinitas, Sharah Chi was nervous. She can admit that now.

Her Super Donuts No. 2 in the Wiegand Plaza shopping center had been doing steady business since 1994, serving freshly baked glazed, sprinkled and chocolate-covered sweets to local retirees, parents with gaggles of soccer players and contractors on the go. Chi always had a big smile and an uncanny ability to remember each customer's favorite. ("They always order the same thing," she explains.)

But Krispy Kreme and its "Hot Now" doughnuts were riding a glucose high with both Wall Street investors and the confectionary crowd. A store opening in a formerly Krispy Kreme-free zone such as Encinitas, and next to a Starbucks to boot, tended to draw crowds.

Chi didn't try to fight the fad: "I told my customers go and try."

And, for a time, her business was a down a bit, maybe by 5 percent.

Then the customers gradually returned to the little shop with the plastic picnic-style tables, the tank filled with large fish and the tasty, but non-Starbucks coffee. They had tried the competition and found it wanting, said Chi: "They say it's too sugary, like candy."

A few weeks ago, the Krispy Kreme shop closed for good. Meanwhile the corporate parent, whose stock had traded as high as $50 a share only to plummet to $4 last year, is still trying to sort out its financial records.

The company that grew too much too fast is now trying to grow by shrinking and getting back to basics.

Chi, 43, who is of Chinese descent, immigrated to this country from Cambodia in 1982. She and other family members -- father, mother, brother and sisters -- own and run six doughnut shops in North County and Los Angeles. In this country, she says, "As long as you're willing to work, you get what you want."

And work she does, eight to 15 hours a day, often arriving at 1 a.m. to start cutting and making doughnuts by hand.

The shop turns out as many as 80 dozen doughnuts on weekdays and 125 dozen on Saturdays and Sundays. Chi and her husband, Chuoy Chauv, who runs Super Donuts No. 3 in Carlsbad, were married 22 years ago on Christmas Day -- their only day off. They have a son, Brandon, who is 14.

The reason her shop survived is simple, in Chi's view. She makes the doughnuts by hand and allows them the 45 minutes needed to rise.

"You have to be patient," she said. "You cannot rush it."

-- Contact Business Editor Ann Perry at (760) 740-5444 or aperry@nctimes.com.

No comments: