By Christopher Holland • The Current Contributing Writer
The downtown of Jim Thorpe is flourishing with a panoply of businesses, and now there’s a shop that’s extra sweet on Broadway.
Donerds Donuts recently opened at 76 Broadway and offers gourmet donuts and specialty coffees. The owners have an interesting background on how they got to Jim Thorpe, and owner Annabel Figueroa took time to participate in an exclusive Q&A with The Current.
Here’s a look inside the donut shop.
The Current: Could you give me a brief background of yourself? Your full name, age, where you’re from, etc.?
Annabel Figueroa: My name is Annabel Figueroa and I’m from Santiago, Chile. I have been living here in Jim thorpe for about a year and a half. I met my husband Andrew Underwood 8 years ago in Santiago, we fell in love, started a business and life together. Andrew is from Sparta, New Jersey.
The Current: What is the full name of the store, and who are the owners?
Figueroa: The full name is Donerds Donuts and the owners are Annabel Figueroa and Andrew Underwood.
The Current: What are the main services provided by the store? What events do you host?
Figueroa: The main services are gourmet donuts and specialty cold brew coffee. Every day we have a wide variety of crazy donut flavors like the cannoli donut, pina colada, strawberry shortcake, key lime pie, S’mores, etc. Also we use top-notch beans from La Colombe, Stumptown and Mauch Chunk coffee which we serve on tap.
We like to think of ourselves as a coffee bar in the sense that we are constantly switching up what we have on tap. We rotate our roasters as well as the specific roasts of coffee. We don’t just serve nitro coffee on tap as we have different drinks such as Matcha green tea latte and chocolate milk on tap.
We’ll be hosting events such as live music and movie nights in our patio area in the summer. More info on that will be coming as we feel out the Covid-19 situation.
The Current: What made you get into the business/industry and how long have you been doing it? Did you have prior experience before branching out on your own? If so, in what positions and where?
Figueroa: We decided to start this business together because we love donuts and we saw that there was a huge demand in Chile. Andrew’s grandfather was a pastry chef and gave us his donut recipe five years ago. We practiced this recipe and perfected it. Then we bought a 1981 VW bus and started selling donuts and coffee in downtown Santiago. We became so successful that we opened a store and franchised Donerds there.
Then we had the opportunity to open a second shop in Jim Thorpe and we decided to take this opportunity and come here.
We were very young when we started this. We didn’t really have much experience starting another business before. I (Annabel) took some business classes in college so we had some knowledge of how businesses work but almost everything we learned in practice. We also ran a pub crawl together in Santiago before starting with Donerds Donuts which taught us a lot about customer service; something that we take great pride in.
The Current: Where does most of your clientele come from?
Figueroa: A lot of our clientele are locals from Jim thorpe, but also a lot of people come from Scranton, Allentown, New York and Philadelphia.
The Current: Were there any challenges that you encountered while going through the process of getting proper permits, licensures, etc. to open your business? If so, what were they and how did you overcome them?
Figueroa: Yes, there were some challenges specially because we opened in the middle of the pandemic. It was hard to find contractors, everything took longer than what we anticipated but fortunately we opened a month and a half ago and everything has been a lot better than what we expected.
The first day we opened we had a huge line and we sold out in less than two hours. Every weekend we still have a line in the morning and people have been amazing with us. We could not be happier with our loyal customers.
The Current: Where are the sources from where your products come from? Are they locally sourced?
Figueroa: Some of our donut ingredients are locally sourced, as well as all the dairy products we use. Our coffee beans are from NYC (Stumptown) and Philadelphia (La Colombe), but we also use a local supplier which is Mauch Chunk coffee.
The Current: How many employees do you have? Do you expect to bring more people on staff in the future?
Figueroa: At the moment it is just me and Andrew but very soon we are going to hire people to help us in the kitchen and to sell. We will hopefully be hiring before the summer!
The Current: What are the business hours? How would you describe the atmosphere at the business?
Figueroa: The business hours are from Friday to Monday from 8:00 am to sold out. We think that in the summer we’ll open 5 days a week and from 8:00 to 5:00 pm.
The atmosphere at the business is very light and happy. Andrew and I have encouraged collaboration and communication. We separate our personal life with our professional life. We always have similar ideas and if we disagree in something we talk about it and always listen to each other. When we have employees we want to promote a positive team atmosphere where communication and respect are always the main key.
Our tagline is “The science of the perfect donut and coffee”, and our shop’s design reflects this. The design incorporates test tubes full of sprinkles and a big caffeine molecule mounted on the wall among other science themes.
The Current: What’s the most exciting element of owning your business?
Figueroa: One of the things we love the most about our business is the image we have. Donerds is like a science lab filled with crazy donut creations. We called ourselves the mad scientists behind this experiment which is donuts and coffee. We love this image because it is very unique and keeps us motivated to investigate and come up with different experiments. We are always looking around and coming up with weird flavors and that is a passion for us.
Also another thing we love about this business is dealing with happy people. When people go to a donut shop they tend to be happy so we always see smiles. We want to create a space where people feel like children again. When they go to Donerds for a moment they forget about their problems and they just live in the moment. We want Donerds to be more like an experience than just a donut shop.
The Current: Is there anything specific that you’d like to mention about your business?
Figueroa: We have a donut shop on Broadway but also we have a food truck that we will use soon for events.
The Current: What does the future look like for your business? Do you have any special events coming up?
Figueroa: In the shop we do have a patio area where we want to have events such as live music and movie nights. Also as soon as this pandemic is over we want to do a legit grand opening event in our patio area.
We don’t have special events yet with the food truck. But as soon as the summer hits and we have more employees we’ll be ready to start joining events.
Visit Donerds Donuts at 76 Broadway in Downtown Jim Thorpe and at www.donerdsdonuts.com
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