Deep Ellum doughnut shop Glazed Donut Works is going mobile. Doughnut fiends will now be able to procure those delectable rounds from the back of a cute little pink food truck.
"Our bus is officially legal for food truck use in the City of Dallas," proclaims a jubilant Darren Cameron, who co-owns Glazed with partner Bill Handshy.
This is contrary to the usual path taken, wherein a food operation starts out as a food truck, then graduates to a brick-and-mortar location — à la Cane Rosso, Nammi and Green Market. And truthfully, that was what Handshy and Cameron had originally planned.
They got to test the bus by delivering doughnuts to the cast and crew of Conan. They created two special flavors for Conan O'Brien and sidekick Andy Richter.
"Our idea was that we would get a little kitchen somewhere, make doughnuts and sell them off the bus," Cameron says. "I bought a short school bus and painted it pink. I had this building in Deep Ellum, so we decided to convert it and make a kitchen. But it quickly became evident that it made more sense to do a brick and mortar and add the food truck later."
That "later" might've not come so soon if it weren't for the quagmire on Elm Street, which the city is redoing. "The construction escalated our plans," Cameron says. "We need to have a second location that's easier for people to get to."
Eventually, they'll use the food truck as a way to spread their doughnuts throughout Dallas.
They got to test the bus by delivering doughnuts to the cast and crew of Conan. They created two special flavors for Conan O'Brien and sidekick Andy Richter. The Candied Richter was a chocolate iced doughnut with bourbon candied bacon, and the Conan was a white chocolate iced doughnut with an orange Grand Marnier-flavored marshmallow. (They'll be selling both of those flavors for the rest of the week.)
In return, they got an acknowledging tweet from Conan writer Rob Kutner saying, "Now THIS is how you welcome Andy Richter to your town!"
In the short term, they're working on a deal with a Deep Ellum landlord for a spot on Commerce or Main not beset by traffic where they can park the bus, so that people can buy doughnuts without having to drive down Elm.
"We'll stick close to home initially because of construction, but I want to open us up to areas and people who aren't already familiar with us," Cameron says. "Also, we've had quite a few requests for events. I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of how we will do that.
"It's probably good that the initial run will happen close to home," he says. "But by this summer, it'll be roaming around town."
Glazed Donut Works is going mobile with a bus-turned-food truck.
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