We recently connected with Tulasi Ognibene and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tulasi, thanks for joining us today. 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.

my wife and I have always been passionate about food and feeding people. In 2015 we wanted to turn our passion into a business. So we decided to start devis donuts, an all vegan donut shop filling the vegan donut gap in Long Beach. Everyone in the area needs to drive quite a bit to get there Vegan donut fix

We first started with one farmer market on Saturday mornings in Long Beach (Bixby Park) the first market we sold out within two hours. We were filled with Joy and decided hey let’s do it next week. The following week came came and we sold out again. Then we thought we might be onto something. We got a few more farmers markets, and also got ourselves into vegan events.

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?

my wife learned a simple donut recipe from a friend maybe 20 years ago and over the years of making donuts for friends and family’s birthday parties and get together. They have turned into what they are today.

One large setback we had in the business was Covid. During the lockdown all farmers markets were also shut as well so we had to pivot, and we started doing delivery and pick up orders out of the kitchen. We were renting at the time.

We are a small family owned business. Our older daughter Devi is the face of the business. Devi in Sanskrit means goddess or queen.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My wife and I have three children. My youngest is three and it’s just us as far as help or employees go. My wife works, making donuts all the way up until she gave birth. She is definitely the rock of the family and business.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Making donuts at the farmers market in the beginning was just a side hustle that became good enough to be a full-time career for us and eventually after years of grinding it out in farmers markets and events we opened up our first location in Long Beach. This month April 21 2025 will be our four Year anniversary at the shop.

It took us six years of grinding in farmers markets, and vegan events to open up our shop

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Instagram: @devis.donuts
• Facebook: Devis.donuts