We recently connected with Melvin Roberson and have shared our conversation below.
Melvin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?
I think about this all the time. Honestly, probably every other week but I always end the thought thinking doing what I’m currently doing is best. At the last place I worked, they told the origin story of the business during onboarding and that particular business had started in 1971. When I began working there in 2010, I thought it was really cool that I was working in a place that had started that long ago and was continuing to thrive almost 50 years later. Now, that story wasn’t super detailed and definitely didn’t talk about any struggles that the owner had probably gone through but I’d like to think it took a lot of good and bad times that the owner had to persevere through in order to make it this long. I’d also assume that the owner would look back on those humble beginnings and despite whatever roadblocks occurred, that he would go back and do the same thing if he new what the company would look like in 2010.
I think that it takes a level of power to be able to give up something that you’ve created to go back into the “regular” job force. I commend those that have done that in the past. Giving up some control and vision for the sake of something a little more consistent is definitely enticing but I’m fully locked in on completing my vision.
Melvin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We specialize in gourmet donuts,donut breakfast sandwiches, cinnamon and sausage rolls. Everything we make is done from scratch from our own recipes. Our mission is to provide the community with a real, gourmet product that’s innovative and fresh. I entered the donut world with very little experience in pastry. It didn’t take long to find out that very popular donut shops were using powdered mixes or frozen donuts for their guests. Growing up, everything that we had eaten at home was all from scratch, so I’m doing the research in donuts and seeing how they were being produced was a huge “culture” shock.
Not only are our donuts made from scratch, but we also dress them to order. I sort of piggybacked on Krispy Kreme’s idea of a fresh, hot donut in having them dressed to order but this method also saves me a bit on food cost as we don’t waste any fully dressed donuts that don’t get sold.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that people eat with their eyes. Posting visually unappealing food won’t get a lot of positive reaction. Find someone in your industry that’s an inspiration or that has a big platform. See how and what they post and try to do that but put your own spin on it. Also, you’ll need to interact with your guests. Some be afraid to go to some other local business pages and verbally show your support for them also. That goes a long way.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Covid is the easy answer here. When covid started there were several different periods in which we had to pivot based off of guidelines constantly being changed. In all, what was successful for us was doing neighborhood tours in which we would come to a different neighborhood daily and sell pre-packaged boxes. We had three different half dozen donut offerings. We also sold our coffee, cinnamon rolls and sausage rolls. Anything that wasn’t sold was donated to first responders.
Contact Info:
- Website: doughboydonuts.net
- Instagram: doughboydonuts
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/DoughBoyDonutsDFW/
- Yelp: https://m.yelp.com/biz/dough-boy-donuts-burleson
Image Credits
IG – @turnersocial