We were lucky to catch up with Elizabeth Pooley recently and have shared our conversation below.

Elizabeth, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you manage your own social media?

I manage all my social media platforms for Square Donut. Not only do I enjoy this aspect of the business immensely, but it allows me to stay connected to my team and bring a more authentic strategy to my marketing resulting in a deeper connection with my customers and staff. Occasionally I will enlist the help of a social media company if I intend to run a particular event that requires more extensive coverage.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have always had the drive for business. At the age of eleven, I needed basketball shoes and my family simply could not afford them. Using my creativity and problem solving skills, I asked for a male and female hamster for my birthday. The strategy behind this was to breed the hamsters and sell the babies to the local pet store in an effort to save enough money to buy my basketball shoes. This was just the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. I have had previous small businesses and was looking to start another one. For me, it isn’t so much about what the business is so much as do I have a passion for the work and how can I attain interest from the consumer to make it profitable. When I had the opportunity to purchase an existing out of state donut shop, I was hesitant because I knew how hard the long, thankless hours it took to run a restaurant with potentially small margins. Something bigger was nudging me so I jumped in. Purchasing the main recipe and the used equipment, moving it over a thousand miles and stuffing it into a tiny storage unit until I could make a game plan. Square Donut was born. After creating the name, I went straight into the branding, finding a location, and strategizing how I wanted to be different from everyone else. Colors for the interior and branding, ingredients, offerings, atmosphere and everything else that went into starting from the ground up with a new business. Opening in March of 2020 at the onset of a global pandemic was one of the most challenging things I have ever experienced. Every plan had to change, everything I had worked over two years creating went into the trash and had to be reinvented, recreated with new marketing techniques and attitudes. Prior to this, no donut shop in the midwest had been doing “to-go” orders or pre orders, and no donut shop in the midwest had been doing “custom” design donuts. Adversity is the greatest opportunity and I was going to take advantage this to the fullest. What sets Square Donut apart from other donut shops and what has since caught on to be replicated in the industry is the very thing I had to create out of desperation to stay open and profitable during Covid. I began taking pre-orders for next day and I began putting customers ideas for designs, themes, logos and anything else they could think of, on a donut! I have worked meticulously at training our staff to deliver the most insane level of hospitality to ensure our customers felt seen, heard and taken care of during the pandemic. All of these strategies have become our standard at Square Donut and continue to this day.

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

It took five years for me to recognize my resilience and then exhale. As I was planning the opening of my new business, my son was in his freshman year of college at NYU in Shanghai China. He called me and made the decision to come back home. Their international program was not as developed as he would’ve liked and if we are to be honest, college wasn’t his thing. I completely understood. He moved back home from China just in time for Coivid to hit. He decided he wanted to help me start the new business. While opening at the onset of the Covid pandemic, nobody could’ve guessed all the challenges that were lying ahead for me. My mother almost lost her life as the paramedics had to revive her and admit her to the ICU. Over four months of being on a ventilator fighting for her life, only to get a call at work that my house was on fire! Everyone was ok and we had to move out of our house for over six months while restorations took place and lived from hotels to apartments. I made my makeshift office out of a closet for the time being. In a brand new business, you already have a million issues to resolve daily, let alone trying to combat new normals with Covid mandates, employees, customers and the plethora of other hats you have to wear. Once we moved back into our house, my 17 year old dog passed away. I won’t even bother to elaborate how awful that was. While managing all this, another restaurant tenant in our building had a sewer back up. And, where did it back up into? You guessed it! My shop! I had to close for three months while restorations were being completed and insurance claims were being fought. During the pandemic, staff shortages amongst restaurants were at an all time high. I eventually had to close for a month and regroup, find my bearings, and hire almost an entire kitchen staff all over again. Attempting not to lose all my employees during the shutdown of the sewer back up was an immense stress. After re-opening, months later my head baker got in car accident and broke his collarbone. Anyone who knows, knows this put him out for over three months. I had to resume my 16- hours days and be baker, decorator, cashier, HR, bookkeeper, mother, daughter and care taker of my mother and a multitude of other responsibilities. All of this coupled with a few ER visits for my exhaustion that I did not want to tell anyone about, and a few other challenges thrown in along the way, I am not sure to this day how I survived let alone thrived in this little thing called Square Donut. Now that I am on the other side, I can only say this was divine intervention from God. He had a plan apparently, and was not going to allow me to sink. Here we are today with an outstanding crew, my amazing son, five years in a row voted best donut shop in Omaha, customers who defy kindness and support and daughter who has shown love, patience and support throughout this journey.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Throughout the journey mentioned above, it was a miracle I could even breathe financially. I had experienced so may closures in the first few years of my new business that it was choking me. The worst was when I could not make payroll due to these closures. I was panicked! I had spent the last 10 years of my life saving every penny I could for an emergency fund for me and my kids just in case life dealt us a blow. The time had come. I had to choose between me and my employees. Needless to say, I withdrew my savings and paid my employees. I have yet to recover that little nest egg, but I did in fact retain my crew. Whew, crisis averted!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.squaredonutomaha.com/
• Instagram: squaredonutoma
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/squaredonutomaha