San Angelo is Sweet on This Unique Donut Shop

EMILY: I’m Emily Washcovick, Yelp’s Small Business Expert. Typically I share a story featuring conversations with a business owner as well as someone who wrote them a Yelp review. This week is the second episode in a mini series that I’m calling The San Angelo series. We’re back with black badge Yelp Elite reviewer Josh H., who has been reviewing businesses and contributing to Yelp for more than a decade now.

He’s shared his experience with a weight lifting gym as well as a favorite brewery slash restaurant. Josh is helping me shine a light on business in San Angelo, Texas. It’s a small town that sits in the Permian basin in West Texas, and is home to Angelo State University and Goodfellow Air Force Base. It may have a population of around 100,000 people, but it’s not short on great places to eat. Today we hear from Josh and the owners of his favorite donut shop, Donutopia, Ash and Sophia Cordona.

JOSH: As soon as you walk in, you smell that unmistakable donut smell, that yeasty just unmistakable donut smell that instantly makes your mouth water. And then that first counter you look at, like grabs your attention cause there’s different colors, different size, different shapes, and your eyes start ogling and then you walk around the corner and they’ve got their shirts up there, they’ve got pictures up on the wall, they’ve got all this, donut-ish type stuff and memorabilia and decor around there.

And even the colors on the wall and stuff. There’s greens and oranges and reds almost kind of like that kid appeal because we never lose our love for the sweets of something like a donut. And then they have display cases where you can see every type of donut there.

That’s the literal showcase that they want to grab your attention with. And that mission is definitely accomplished. It’s not very big. It’s long and narrow inside there, but you’re there to look at the donuts—point, pick, get what you need. Not a whole lot of tables in there, but if you wanted to, you could sit down and have a cup of coffee and your donut, but it’s primarily built to grab your donuts and go.

But very inviting, very welcoming. You’re always greeted with a big, ‘Hey, welcome to Donutopia. How are you today?’ And Ash and Sophia both are really good that by your second visit, you’re already a regular and they’re calling you by your first name. I do like that and that’s what makes it a very hometown type place.

Versus a bigger chain, they’re never gonna remember you by first name. I got that within my second trip in, and I felt like honestly, best friends or family, every time I go in there to get something and I can consistently get the things that I know I like. And then there’s always something that Ash and Sophia are playing with or coming up with new, whether it’s a design of a donut, a type of donut. They’ve asked me for some opinions and feedback, which really makes me think they value my opinion and they have a general concern for pleasing their customers. They want you to be happy with their product, which is donuts—putting smiles on faces, and warm fuzzies in your belly seems to be their objective. And they do it every time.

EMILY: Well now I really want a donut.

That’s such an excellent description of this small shop with big ideas and even bigger flavors. Ash, I know you mentioned earlier that you never thought you’d be running a donut shop in San Angelo, but here you and Sophia are. Can you talk about how you ended up with Donutopia?

ASH: She’s always wanted to be the owner of the donut store. She’s always had a lot of ideas. In life, it’s just about finding the opportunity. We had another business in Midland or Odessa. We were running a trucking company and we were doing really well. We were doing really well for a couple years. She had some friends here.

She was helping this person out. This person came into a lot of problems. An opportunity came up. And she said she wanted to buy this donut store from this person. And so we did it. We had some money and we bought it. And then she took it and she kind of ran with it. She started implementing her ideas. She started doing her thing. She started generating new business, making new locals, keeping the existing ones that were here. Got a new type of culture over here, a totally new type of environment.

And started putting out totally different donuts. Then that’s what you have. You have this, this sky’s the limit now. So forward a little bit. We ran into covid, which kind of slowed me down at what we were running over there. So I came home and just came over and started helping her out.

She was so busy. It was just really crazy. So it just didn’t make sense when things started going back to the groove. We’re very family oriented and family driven. So it just was a real easy decision. And we decided to sell off the other company and put our energy into this, and it’s been a real blessing and it’s just been really something special.

And she’s the front leader in it. I’m the number two, I just sponsor what she wants to do. She puts her heart in everything and we hire people that love being here.

EMILY: Dessert is a big tradition in Cambodia where you’re from, isn’t it Sophea? I heard it’s eaten throughout the day with breakfast and lunch, and as a snack. But are donuts a big thing in Cambodia?

SOPHEA: We have different desserts, right? So I’m here, I see everybody talking about donuts and stuff. Like I always want to work so I can learn from them and so I can own one someday. So I came here and worked with these guys and I learned a little bit from him and I run with it and I like it.

EMILY: Ash, Josh, and I were talking about all of your unique flavors before we started our conversation, and he mentioned mochi donuts as an example of how you integrate Sophea’s background into your flavors. How do you come up with new flavors, and how do you know what flavors are going to be a hit with the customers?

ASH: Sophea’s a lot like me. We like to be challenged and we always like to have something in our mind that’s giving us some kind of a problem so we can have something to always figure out. So we are going down the list of everything that they do around the world and everything they do locally or everything they do in donuts.

And we work to implement it, then we work to make it better and to make you win for our own signature way of doing it. We integrate with our customers. We value their feedback very much. So, Josh, we give him a lot of stuff that we do just to hear his opinion.

And we do that with actually quite a few of our customers, our guests that come through here. And that just helps us kind of refine and refine and refine. And that’s what we do. We’re just going down the list and, anything that gives us a challenge, we wanna learn it.

And we not only wanna learn it, but we wanna make it the very best, and then we wanna make it our own. We do probably, I don’t know, probably 150, 200 donuts now. We just kinda cycle through ’em. Somes are more popular than others, but we always keep it going. One thing I will tell you that we do here, that nobody does, is that we make these donuts where they’re like—the price of a custom cake is very expensive.

And our idea is that we can do exactly what they do on cakes, on donuts. So we make the unique design on a donut. We can make a donut in any shape, any size. We can stack ’em up, we can do the size, we can do regular donuts for cupcakes instead of donuts. And we’ve come up with this whole thing where we do these birthdays now we do donut towers.

If somebody has a theme of, I don’t know what was one we just did? Panda. We just did one of those Panda so we drew these pandas. We can do exactly what they do on cakes, we do ’em on donuts, we can do any size, we can do any shape.

Donuts are a lot more fun and they’re a lot more inexpensive and it’s something new. And people really love it, man. It’s really crazy. People are tired of cakes I guess. You know, that buttercream on cakes is a little strong. So when you eat like a cupcake or a cake, you can really only eat so much of it before that sugar just gets too much for you.

And on a donut, it just goes on there. It’s not overkill. And the donut tastes so great that it just changes the whole thing. But it’s giving us a niche into these parties and these birthdays and celebrations.

EMILY: That’s really cool. I think donut shops becoming the sweet option for events is definitely a trend, but it’s like a balancing act, I’m sure, right? To have donuts available for the people who walk in, and then to also create those specialty ones.

How do you guys deal with the supply and demand on a regular day? Like I always think a donut shop’s goal is to sell out, right? But how do you make sure that you have enough so that you don’t sell out too early. Do you track how many you sell?

ASH: The way that’s done is just through experience. One part of that is that this store has reached its max. So we can’t serve more than what we can do here. So we drew a line and said —look, this is what we feel comfortable that we can do without killing everybody.

Where we’re at is just the equipment it’s not big enough. The room is not big enough. The place is not big enough for us to do what—we can go through the door. That’s a lot of like, 1, 2, 3, repeat, 1, 2, 3, repeat. And you gotta keep doing it. So you gotta get here earlier and earlier and earlier.

We don’t wanna cut any corners. That’s something that I will tell you, we don’t cut any corners. That’s that heart that I’m talking to you about, that passion. We don’t cut any corners. We make everything fresh in the morning. We make sure everything’s right and perfect. So there’s times that we’re here at 10 o’clock at night, sometimes we don’t even go home.

The last week of Halloween, we won’t even be going home. And that’s with all our staff and everything. And that’s where we’re at. So we’ve drawn a line for our day to day and we pretty much sell out every day.

If there is anything left, It’s very little and we usually give it away. We have a basket of people that we donate the donuts to that are really highly, really appreciative of it, and they’re not in a position where they can get it. So they seem really excited about it and we’re excited to do it.

EMILY: So that’s really nice. Ash, I wanna give you a chance to talk about your team. How many employees roughly do you have? Can you talk a little bit about how you make sure that they carry that same heart and passion that you and Sophia have?

ASH: Yeah, absolutely. So we have a pretty small team. It’s five or six people in the morning, and then in the daytime it’s two to three from four or five. It just depends on what day it is in the front. So that’s what it takes for this thing to do it every day.

So a little bit about my past. I worked for Pioneer Natural Resources. I was part of their leadership committee. I sat at the front end of the leadership committee. We kind of structured the fleets and did the whole thing. And that was really intuitive for me to keep that culture.

It’s really difficult to keep a strong culture in a work environment. That culture is really important. We have high expectations. We make sure that things don’t get toxic. And the most important thing is we want people to wanna be here. So if they don’t wanna be here, we don’t want ’em here. In our experience, the ones that we’ve hired that meet that mold, they tend to wanna work. They wanna be here, they wanna integrate and they wanna meet the people, and they wanna come up with their own donuts. And they wanna have a lot of fun doing it.

We had a small little hiccup where we needed a lot more staff real quick. And what we did, we ended up getting some people, and it’s really crazy. It takes one, it takes one. You get one person, they go over there and get on their phone, and then before you know it, nobody’s cleaning and moving around anymore. Everybody’s on their phone. And so we flagged it down and we just got rid of that person and we said, we’ll run it a little bit behind and they’ll have to do a little bit more.

And it just gets right back on track and everything moves real good. And it keeps it real good. And in my experience, the people that wanna work, they want that environment. They really feel, I guess like heavy or saturated if they have that where somebody doesn’t wanna do what they’re doing, if they’re cleaning and they look over and somebody’s not cleaning, they don’t wanna do it anymore.

They feel like this takes them away and they’re not happy. They don’t get happy. And when they are moving and they are taking pride in everything they do, they’re just so proud to be here. And they’re happy to do anything for anybody. It’s just really something special.

But we just run it real tight and somebody doesn’t fit in, we’re real clear of what our culture is. Our culture is everything is measured by contribution and attitude. We expect everybody to contribute and we expect everybody to have a great attitude. That’s what we do and that’s how we keep it. And it seems to be working pretty good.

EMILY: So I know that although donuts are the main focus of the business, I can see they aren’t the only thing made at Donutopia. Josh, what are some of the other menu items that aren’t traditional donuts?

JOSH: They’ve got apple fritters out of this world that are bigger than my hand, twice as big as my hand. They’ve got fritters of every type of fruit flavor you can imagine, which is unique and rare. The mochi donuts, long Johns, eclairs, Bismarks braided twists. You guys do kolaches which I’d never heard of until I got to Texas. Kolaches are like a thing here. It’s got a cult like. You guys have your version of a sausage egg McMuffin, which is insanely good.

You’ve got egg and cheese muffins. You’ve got your croissants, you’ve got the danishes, you’ve got your breakfast burritos, which are freaking huge. My wife loves those. You guys do other things. You have other things there that are unbelievably good besides just the donuts too, and the unique types of donuts and any detail or logo you can show whether it’s, whatever your kid’s favorite cartoon is, whatever their favorite superhero is, whatever their favorite game is.

ASH: We do every cake you could think of, it’s just so much to think of that’s not, you don’t kinda think of what’s traditional, what’s not traditional. Pumpkin, we do carrot cake. We do vanilla cakes. We do the pumpkin spice, obviously for right now. Everybody does that. We do the old fashioned blueberry red, velvet chocolate. We do mochi donuts. We do the buttermilk bars, we do the French crullers. Anything you can think of, it’s here.

EMILY: I need to know a little bit about how you can keep the menu so big. I think a lot of people struggle with that because it’s like the balancing act of knowing what people are gonna wanna eat. But you obviously have the demand, right?

ASH: That’s right. Anything we put out, we just sell it. We just keep it random. We have the basic that we do, obviously your glaze, your chocolates, your basic stuff and then the other stuff. So it really doesn’t get that big, it’s just, it’s all donuts. It’s just different ways of doing them.

JOSH: You guys do the traditional 10 in your own way that you always find. And then there’s maybe five other ones out there that are creative, fun donut type things that you have in there, like maybe some of the fritters and stuff like that.

Yet you do well at keeping the menu big enough with some diversity of the new stuff. And then the seasonals, the rotational ones, and then you’ve got your staples cuz you know people are gonna come and ask him for those all the time.

ASH: And honestly we sell so much glazed chocolate and that’s really our focal point. The really the rest of the stuff is just to get people in and curious and have fun and come in and, but it’s all been really popular so we look at what we do for the day. We’ve been doing it for a while now, so we know what this store will do, and that’s really how we keep it together.

EMILY: That’s so cool. Josh actually was talking about how vibrant and colorful it is inside, and I could see that when I was just looking at some pictures. Did you guys do a big remodel when you bought the place, and rebranding?

ASH: Not so much. We kinda added a little bit and we just added new donuts. We brought a new spirit into it. I mean we’ve tripled the size of the display and there’s absolutely no room in here anymore.

EMILY: So does that mean Donutopia number two, or moving this one into a bigger space?

ASH: No, it’s a number two. It’s definitely a number two.

EMILY: So tell me about that!

ASH: Well, there’s not really much to say about it right now. We kept it under wraps. It’s just what it is. We have our spot. For us, like I said, it’s about the heart. Obviously it’s a different area here in town and we measure everything with our contribution.

And so we wanna make a great contribution to that part of the town, and we wanna make a good step forward and we wanna make it a next step forward up for Donutopia also.

EMILY: Ash touched earlier on what he and Sophea look for when hiring staff for Donutopia. If it’s all about the heart, then those people working up front need to be putting their own heart and soul into the business as well. Josh, can you expand a little on the atmosphere?

JOSH: Typically, I go in when I know Ash and Sophia will be there. So I hit them up every single time cuz that’s part of what brings me in. I’m looking for that interaction with them. It’s been rare that I actually go in when it’s somebody else. And we hit it off right away as if our conversation from the previous visit never ended. We just pick up right there, right away. They tell me what’s new. They ask what I’ve been up to. We have small talk. I get some donuts. Without fail. They always give me like three or four more than I need. And then I bring those home to the family and they love me for it cuz they’ve got free donuts now. That goes with that heart. They want to please you.

They want to show that love. They want to put a donut in your belly. That way you come back again next time. It’s not about just making a profit. In fact, I’ve never gotten the vibe they’re trying to sell me a donut. My stomach’s gonna do that for ’em. But it’s just super welcoming. It’s very friendly and their product is the way that they do that.

But it’s the culture, the vibe, the character traits within the building, which is built and sustained by them, by Sophia and Ash and the people they hire, and even their customers are the same way. They’re always the jovial, happy, positive people that go in there to get their donuts, probably because they’re excited to be picking up their box of donuts, who wouldn’t be happy? They do well to sustain that. And it’s captured within the walls of Donutopia every time you go in.

EMILY: Josh, you’re obviously a regular reviewer, and it takes a lot of dedication and determination to review as much as you have. Can you talk about your motivation and why a place like Donutopia warrants a good review?

JOSH: The big thing that motivates me to do reviews like this is that when I find a place that is exceptional and makes me want to come back and it’s just different. It’s unique, it’s a positive experience, and their product is good, tasty, delicious, whatever it might be. If it’s food we’re talking about, I wanna make sure other people find that place so they can experience exactly what I did and almost walk through my footsteps based on the review I gave them and the pictures that I show, which helps the customer, much like myself.

I’m a consumer customer too. They’re gonna be able to go find it, but then it’s also a double whammy benefit for that business. Cause I want them to get more customers like me to go in and get that same positive experience. So that’s why I do the reviews and that’s why I share.

EMILY: Ash, a lot of our listeners have had their fair share of frustration with reviews. How do you engage with reviews? Do you read them, or use them in any way in your business?

ASH: Yes, we do read the reviews. We take it all in as feedback. Of course you’re not gonna win every one of them. The only thing I could say—we love getting great reviews. Actually, we love any review. It’s real hard to say—there’s so easy to talk about the good ones, but then there’s two that will stick out. For us as a business owner, I think the biggest thing to overcome is that sometimes you’ll get a bad review, and you have to figure out how you’re gonna handle it. And some of them need a response and some of ’em don’t. Most all of them, it’s feedback.

It’s all feedback, right? So like for me, I wish there sometimes we could just get rid of it, it’s like this is total nonsense. We had one not too long ago. You read it and you go, it was so not important to them that they didn’t even go past the person helping them and ask for a manager, You know what I’m saying?

They didn’t do any more investigating. They just walked out and they just said this. It’s like this here. That’s so frustrating. Yeah. And you go, man, you wanna respond. But the way you’re gonna respond to that is not gonna be intuitive. So it’s better just to let that be their experience, let them share that.

And that’s just part of being a business. You’re gonna have people that are gonna be very happy here. And they’re gonna be people that you know are not. You wanna make every one of ’em happy. You’re fortunate that they’ll share that feedback. You look at it, and if it applies, you apply it. If it doesn’t, you just let it fly. That’s the best way you can take it. But we do take it to heart. We do look at it. But in the end, I come to it with myself just saying that your experience is your experience, right? And this is a board that people get to put their experience on there. And if that’s their experience, then that’s their experience. Whatever emotion was driving it or whatever their day was, or whatever. It was all inclusive, that’s their experience and that’s something that everybody gets to look at and share. And that’s just part of it. It’s part of running a transparent business.

EMILY: That’s a really good perspective, Ash. I think that’s a really good way to look at it. So can you just talk about the heart and why it’s so important in your business and how that really comes across in the consumer experience, because I’m sure it comes through in the way things taste and the way people feel when they leave. It’s really all about everything that you guys do.

ASH: Absolutely. So the heart is the passion obviously. And with anything that you love, you love what you do, so you don’t ever cut a corner. The reason why baking is so hard is cuz you mess up, you can’t just throw a spice on it. You gotta go all the way back to the beginning, start over again. Because of that, you get a lot of people that will cut corners and that’s the hardest. Obviously the end result is more customers, right?

Return customer base, stuff like this, opportunities to talk. And you hear Josh and you say, man, it’s really great to hear him talk like that. It’s really great. You know what I mean? It’s real special to us. And baking gets so easy to cut corners and it’s so easy to say that it’s just gonna get it this way.

But when you really love it and you really love seeing a little girl, almost start crying, cuz you got a unicorn donut. We’ve had people come in and just say, Can you put this on a donut real quick for us? And, we’ll do it. And it just melts their heart. It almost makes you cry. But that’s that passion. That’s inexcusable action. You just won’t cut a corner. You’re just gonna do it the right way. You want that experience every time.

That’s what drives you, they’re just a regular customer. They come in and then when they get more than what they wanted. A lot of the kids, they wanna start crying and stuff. It’s crazy. It’s really special, and it’s a lot of fun and it’s awesome. And that’s what it is for me. I wish you could see me. I don’t look like the type of guy that, but you know, I have a son.

I love seeing my son just melt, you know? And when these little kids come in here, it’s just really, really something special to see them. Their emotions just go crazy over our donut. That’s something that we really take to heart, and we take a lot of pride in it, but ultimately it’s just about not cutting corners and it’s about doing the right thing.

If something bad gets out, we throw it away. I’ve seen Sophia come in and just take just rows of stuff and just throw ’em away. Somebody else would say, let me just get my money for this product today. But she’ll wipe out a whole entire deal if something’s not right, just to make sure that it’s always right for them. And I think that says, I think that says a lot. She’s the number one I just get behind her. When I see her do stuff like that, I just know that that’s the right thing to do.

So I guess they say the only way you can measure anything is the result. And the result of the more people coming in shows how much she cares about the customer coming in.

EMILY: I think Donutopia, whether intentionally or not, has become like a community staple and that’s probably because of the way they treat people as well as the product. I just would love to hear from you, Josh, why a business that’s integrated into the community is so important.

JOSH: I would say that the reason why there is, I call it allegiance with locals and Donutopia is they’re different. They’re just uniquely their own. ASU stuff all over inside wanting to show that reflection, care, and concern for the local university.

They’ve got good fellow Air Force based stuff in there. They’ve got Shannon Medical stuff in there. That already shows that, Hey, we know who you guys are here and we care about you, and we want you coming in. That welcoming the first name type thing goes a long way when you have a personal touch to things.

The fact that they do have their partnerships with organizations that routinely will get excess donuts. How is that not gonna make them friends with you really quick? The fact that they do military discounts, they do student discounts, they do first responder discounts. That shows that they understand where the big players in the community are, the base, the hospital and the university, and they give something back to them.

And I think people then, they like that pat on the back. They like that appreciation. So they show that with their dollars by coming in and buying from them versus someone else. And now that that’s been going for a while, the reputation speaks for itself. And then if you’ve got a really good product, in this case, donuts on top of it, it’s win-win.

How’s that not gonna work? And as long as you can sustain that with your employees, keep that positive vibe and just, and keep that going. It’s, in my opinion, smooth sales just ride the tide once you’ve built it. And they have.

EMILY: Ash, anything you wanted to add on that about maybe why you give back to those different community members or why that connection matters to you?

ASH: I mean, for us it’s just a little bit more simpler. It’s just happiness man, we just like to be doing something and contributing. And like I said earlier, everything is measured by your contribution and your attitude and love to contribute to anybody. We just like to spread the happiness. We like to see people enjoy the stuff that we do, and we like to be doing something, and one creates the other. We donate a lot. So many churches, ASU, the hospitals, everything we do. We’re just about to do another thing over here for this breast cancer. It’s just about, just contributing. We love spreading the happiness. It’s just really about love and happiness for us.