We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Raphael T. Harlan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Raphael T. below.

Raphael T. , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Raphael’s Donuts was created and invented out of inspiration from my late adoptive mother’s type two diabetic history and my love and passion for healthy eating, baking and living. I dreamed of her eating a low glycemic donut back in 2013, two years after her passing in December 2013 at a long time age of 75 years. After I dreamed of her doing so in my sleep, I researched it and found out that no company in the history of the donut industry did a low glycemic donut that regulates blood sugar levels and also tastes very delicious. With my knowledge of baking, I developed my own recipe for low glycemic donuts and have my college classmates and professors at the University of Michigan-Flint, better referred to as UM-Flint or U of M-Flint, in Flint to try them. After they enjoyed them time after time, with the mentorship of my then-closest friend Denise Michaels from Las Vegas, I researched the market and for the first time in my entrepreneurship, took start up business classes for food industry since I was new to the food industry at the time. After a half year of training and a bit of crowdfunding, with mostly my savings and student loans, I launched Raphael’s Donuts in May 2014.

When I launched RD in 2014, we started on a cottage food law level of operation, baking out of my old Duplex style studio apartment and selling my then-non-vegan diabetic-safe donuts at various farmers markets and festivals in Genesee County and rest of Mid Michigan. People were enjoying them, even though they had trouble getting mentally used to the diabetic-safe donut concept. Even when I had my donuts sold in our only retailer at the time, Dale’s Natural Foods in Flint, they were still having a slow time getting mentally used to my products. We did $2500 in sales that year and just $1100 in 2015. I recognized, not that they weren’t ready, the customers that is, but our market in Genesee County was limited. We needed to include more people, so I changed the base recipe and the sales strategy in Fall 2015, which led to us offering home delivery services using Facebook in that latter part of that year, which with our 70 mile radius of delivery involving delivery drivers on our side include customers from Lapeer County, Shiawassee County, Livingston County and even Oakland County thru 2019. It also led to us finally shipping our donuts nationwide in 2018 and transitioning to being a 100% vegan, diabetic-safe donut company in June 2017. generating annual sales of $3400 in 2017, $6100 in 2018 which was the highest sales year in our history, and of course led to us moving our operations and me into Pontiac, where we managed to have a successful crowdfunding fundraiser in the first five months of 2020, raising $4800 in crowdfunding donations and business grants for us to expand back up to commercial production in July 2021 and getting our products back into retailers, and into multiple retailers, I must add.

I was so grateful and blessed when I finally got my donut production back to commercial production in 2021, because with the love and support from my customers and from my business associates, along with friends and family and God himself, I put my effort and energy into building a brand out of Raphael’s Donuts, at least on a commercial level. My donuts and donut ballz made a big difference in people’s lives by stabilizing their blood sugar levels and their overall health, with the unique flavor combinations and wonderful beneficial nutrition they possess. It’s so marvelous!!!!!

By the way, Raphael’s Donuts’ operation is temporarily halted due to the need for expansion capital as we’re in need of $25,000 for us to expand and resume; it’s been temporarily suspended since June 2023. But our expansion fundraiser which we’ve been on since December 2022 is temporarily suspended till I’m fully prepared mentally to protect myself and others from future potential evil doers such as scammers. I was exploited, brainwashed, scammed and labor-trafficked by a professional scammer and predator who’s had two decades worth of history of scamming multiple people, including people with mental and other disabilities. For more, I have two videos up on the Raphael’s Donuts YouTube and Facebook pages for you and the viewers and readers to watch, which will tell you the full story of what happened to me, how I dealt with it, what I’m doing to better protect myself as a mentally underdeveloped adult and others, and what I’m doing professionally presently that might later in the future on play a role in my fundraising efforts to fund RD’s resuming and expansion, so I encourage you all to watch.

Part 1: https://youtu.be/dM2JXn7zK0w?si=bDz8mMyHuaklnJLc
Part 2: https://youtu.be/OWeJdabA7N8?si=QZwLhEBj0Z_u8zCZ

Though the process of getting funded to resume and expand RD is longer, mainly because of what happened to me, my mind and heart is on the process and with my supporters and friends behind me, I’m bound to follow suit with my vision, but to do it safely and without any evil doers targeting me as a potential victim, mainly because I happen to be a pioneer to a category in the donut industry that didn’t exist before 2014 and that I’m a unique person having done so.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a Detroit native living with a mental delay disability, courtesy of my late birth mom’s drug addiction to heroin and cocaine. I was fostered in 1998 and adopted in 2001 by a lovely woman named Cora Lee Harlan who had history of fostered multiple children. I’m a graduate of the Detroit Public Schools district, having graduated from Mumford High in 2010, and I’m a alum of the University of Michigan-Flint, not having graduated from the college and having dropped out to focus on RD full-time, growing it into the company it is today. I’m a nine-year ethical vegan who strongly loves animals and their welfare, as well as the environment in terms of caring for it. I’m also a big time long time thrifter and wearer of thrifted vintage clothing, having thrifted them since 2003.

I’ve been in the business world since 2012, having owned a total of four businesses, including the three former businesses — a third party t-shirt design business, an landscape company which I used other people’s equipment to do their lawn care, gardening and snow removal, and an e-book editing service which I edited ebook manuscripts from indie authors from around the globe. My work ethic and pride and joy for my entrepreneurship is undeniably apparent. Since RD is my most influential and most impactful company in my career, I put in my heart, soul and my personality into it and treat it like a special baby, like, in WWE terms, a world title around my waist. I even put my creativity into my flavors of donuts that I produce.

Speaking of flavors, I offer 12 year-round flavors of my diabetic-safe vegan donuts and donut ballz — Agave Cinnamon Spiced, Apple Cinnamon Spiced, Banana Grapefruit, Blueberry Cake, Dark Blueberry, Chocolate Paprika, Chocolate Cherry Express, Green Lemon, Strawberry Lemon Delight, Pumpkin Spiced, Peach Mango Explosion, and Vanilla Passion, using wonderful health-beneficial and delicious ingredients such as various fruit flavored herbal teas, agave and stevia, various 100% fruit juices, unsweetened flax milk, chickpea flour, organic bananas and dried mangoes, and chia and flax seeds and unsweetened apple sauce. I charge $13 for a half dozen and $26 for a dozen when sold on my website for home delivery and nationwide shipping. In stores, sold frozen, they’re $7.50 for three count packs and $13 for a half dozen. For the donut ballz, doesn’t matter where they’re sold, they’re $13 for a sixteen-count pack.

I’m so joyful and proud of everything so far that RD has achieved and has impacted multiple people and their health in such as positive way!

So about my vintage modeling content on my personal Instagram and Facebook which I’ve been doing for seven months to this day, I do vintage OOTDs (outfits of the day videos), vintage thrift hauls and what I eat vegan videos. I use my vintage clothing and accessories that I thrifted and wore over the years and most recently to model and showcase. Presently between my Facebook and Instagram pages, I have over 1600 followers. To make money off my content presently, I take tips on CashApp and Venmo from people that enjoy my content. Whatever amount of money that they can afford to send me, I take them and I do appreciate them and, more importantly, the viewers’ support of me and my vintage modeling content. I also get commissioned thru referral offers that I offer the viewers from online thrifting websites that I use to thrift, such as Poshmark and Mercari, as well as vegan-friendly shopping websites such as Walmart + and future websites of the vintage related and vegan related products I may get chosen to promote or model.

My hopes with my vintage modeling, as you’ll see in my second RD update video, are for me to make a long term new household income with it, which will replace my SSI benefits that I’ve had since 2010, and also for it to become a future contributing part of my fundraising efforts to get RD fully funded to resume and expand. I see people tipping me, a lot of people tipping me because they enjoy my wonderful unique personality and my vintage outfits, and they enjoy my vegan meals that I eat so enjoyably. I see vegan-related and vintage-related companies, shops and non-profits contacting me because they want to pay me to mode their accessories and their clothing. And I see many people enjoying my content in the United States and abroad. I do see myself doing runways with my vintage modeling.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Well, there are two stories from my life journey that represented my resilence and my bounce-back and recovery — first one started when I was 12 in 2004. I was sexually assaulted by an eighth grade student after gym class in the locker room. Then afterwards, he threatened to kill me if I told anyone about what he did to me, and I told my teacher about it, using the bit of courage I had left. I didn’t tell my mom till the week after. By then, the evidence that was in my underwear had been washed off. It would have gotten the rapist arrested and slammed behind bars, though he was expelled from school forever. That moment was when my mom and I did a pivot, transferring me to MacDowell Elementary to finish sixth grade. But it would take me a decade before I interacted with a male again.

The other story was recent from Fall 2024 thru July 2025 which I was exploited and mentally held captive and scammed and labor-trafficked. While I’m going to let my two RD update videos tell you and the readers the deep details of the scammer’s evil actions towards me, I’m going to say this — Till that event, I’ve always lived in safer environments aka safer neighborhoods, whether it was the East Village neighborhood of Flint, or the small part of the North Hill Farms complex in Pontiac, where the neighbors were kind and respectful and caring for each other and there wasn’t nearly as much domestic violence as ever, and I’ve never had anyone in my adult hood premeditatedly target me as a potential victim for their evil doings, especially scamming and identity theft. Though I’d been aware of there being a small number of evil people doing some of the most horrific things that are Satanic and demonic, I never had to think about that happening to me. Sure, I was robbed at knife-point one time near a MTA bus station by a pair of teenage boys and it was a wallet of mine that they took that had my cards which I ended up replacing quick back in 2016, but I never had been targeted by potential scammers. When the scam happened to me, I had absolutely no idea. I had no idea what evil capabilities he might have had, and instinctively, I didn’t sense any evil vibes from the scammer. But I have no blame for myself for that event.

I’m grateful and blessed to be alive to tell you the event and to do a video about my story of what happened to me. My hope with my two Youtube videos is for anyone with similar disabilities or different disabilities or weaknesses, whether they’re well-managed or under-managed or unmanaged ones, to get help on strengthening their lives, their lifestyles, their hobbies and habits, their relationships, and their personality to where they’re impossible to mess with, and to develop or strengthen their instincts and mental senses to where they’re coexisting with each other to deflate any evil doers and their potential intentions and actions. I’m developing a stronger mental sense to detect and deflate evil people with my peer support person, as well as developing a softer volume of voice with my speech therapies to prevent evil people to targeting me as their potential victim. It’s key for my present vintage modeling/content creating venture and for my future RD operations and future crowdfunding fundraising efforts to resume RD, whenever I’m ready to get back at it. Also key for my business relationships, personal relationships — my friendships and my future romantic relationships whether it’s with Dawn, my girlfriend of five years and my best friend or if I can’t reclaim the romance that the scammer compromised, with someone else.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Social Media and Word of Mouth.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.raphaelsdonuts.com —- Temporarily inactive for the time being till we’re fully funded to renew it. For my vintage modeling — www.allmylinks.com/raphaeltharlan
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/raphaelsdonuts and www.instagram.com/harlanraphaelralph (for my vintage modeling/vegan eating content
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/raphaeldonuts and www.facebook.com/rtharlan (for my vintage modeling/vegan eating content
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/raphaelsdonuts

Image Credits

all of the photos, from me