Comfort food is popular during unsettling times, and an Auckland designer donut-making couple say it’s been hard to keep up with demand.
Daniel and Annie Black are the owners of Grown Up Donuts, and have been inundated with orders through lockdown keeping delivery staff busy.
Their three stores were closed during alert level 4 but they were allowed to operate as a contactless bakery out of Henderson.
Grown Up Donuts Photo: Daniel Black
Daniels tells Kathryn Ryan demand for donuts "has never been higher"
"We took nearly a whole week worth of orders in a few hours, and we had to actually stop taking orders.
"When you are locked up at home and unable to go out, you do need that extra little bit of comfort, that little extra indulgence, a donut is those things.
"With many businesses shut down and not able to operate, we were very fortunate to be able to. I think people were looking for something, that little bit of normalcy."
Their business which started about three-and-a-half years ago had been building steadily since they started out at a farmer's market on the weekends, Annie says.
"I got a lot of people asking, 'where else can I buy your donuts?'
"I'm just really passionate about food and just love making food."
They had to take on several more delivery drivers during level 4, and while that delivery demand has somewhat lessened, it's still higher than normal, Daniel says.
"The stores are normally quite busy but now we have the added load of delivery orders on top of that, which we're not doing as many as we were doing during level 4, but certainly far in excess in the number of orders we'd normally be taking.
"We're still taking maybe 500 percent more orders than we'd usually take under normal operating conditions I guess you could say."
The business name evolved out of Annie and Daniel's aim to cater for adult tastes in donuts.
"We started coming up with these very unique flavours that we thought an adult might be more inclined to give this a go - like a Belgian chocolate with a hint of Baileys in it in a custard than opposed to just plain old strawberry icing.
"The second thing we really wanted to achieve was to make sure that they weren't too sweet. ... That you could eat one and go 'oh gee, that was really great, maybe I should have another one now'."
Some of their unusual but loved flavours include black sesame custard (consisting of ground up toasted sesame seeds swirled into custard) and passionate fruit curd with toasted meringue on top, Daniel says.
They do still have the classics like strawberry jam and cream, he says, but to keep it specialised they make their own jam.
"The philosophy was just to use very good ingredients and to use no additives or preservatives or artificial flavourings of any kind."
Annie, who has a background in fashion, says another key element was to make them look good, with the decorations being handmade instore.
Daniel says they are probably making 10 times the number of donuts they once did.
"It's certainly grown much larger than we anticipated it would, but we are loving that, and are really amazed at the feedback and positive response from our customers.
"So, we have certainly got some plans to open a few more stores and more outlets around Auckland see how they go, beyond that, we're not too sure, franchising maybe, but maybe we keep it special and keep it unique."
