A new East Sacramento doughnut shop opened amid the coronavirus pandemic. And sold out twice
Donuts & Coffey opened at 5611 Folsom Blvd. on Thursday, weeks after California restaurants stopped dine-in service and nearby Sacramento State went online-only to slow the coronavirus’ spread. Yet thanks to friendly neighbors and a delivery app, its first couple days have gone better than the owners could have hoped for under the best circumstance.
Aaron Coffey and Thana Ny’s family-owned doughnut shop in East Sacramento sold all 600 baked goods for the opening, Ny said. Her brother, Thana Rong Ny, a former baker at Donut Time in North Highlands, stayed late Thursday night to make sure the store was well-stocked for Friday. All doughnuts were gone by 11 a.m., Ny said.
“It’s been crazy ... we’re very slammed,” Ny said.
Coffey and Ny started planning their doughnut shop in early August and got to work renovating the former nail salon over the winter. They quit their respective jobs as a sales manager at industrial supplies distributor Fastenal and an auditor, and persuaded Ny’s sister, Thana Rong Rath Ny, to leave Tea 18 in Natomas to oversee Donuts & Coffey’s bubble tea offerings.
As the coronavirus pandemic’s scale became clearer throughout March, Donuts & Coffey’s future got cloudier. Coffey and Ny got their final permit on March 27 but had planned not to open until social-distancing restrictions were lifted, which was then supposed to be April 7. When the shelter-in-place directive was extended, Ny said they decided the store couldn’t wait any longer.
“It was a lot of fear. We didn’t know where we were going to land,” Ny said. “For us, in our situation, we’re a bunch of full-time employees who gave up our jobs to open up this new journey. So it was kind of surprising, but we’re taking it day-by-day and trying not to get too stressed.”
A neighbor’s post on the nearby Elmhurst neighborhood’s Nextdoor page led many people to Donuts & Coffey, Ny said, and a 15-percent-off opening special didn’t hurt. The majority of orders came through DoorDash, which has waived its usual 15-30 percent commission fees for restaurants’ first 30 days on the app, though Donuts & Coffey is also available through Postmates and GrubHub.
Old-fashioneds, bearclaws and cronuts are joined by house special tiramisu doughnuts, which riff on the espresso genoise cake Ny often makes for holiday gatherings. Savory breakfast items include ham-and-cheese croissants and breakfast burritos, and to-order breakfast sandwiches are on their way.
More pressing than the sandwiches, though, may be the plexiglass window Donuts & Coffee will have installed to keep customers safe. If one staff member contracts the virus that causes COVID-19, Ny said, the whole family probably will. For now, they spray down card readers with disinfectant after every transaction, sanitize surfaces often and have pushed a table against the counter to keep customers from getting too close.
“We’re doing our best, and that’s all we can do. We clean as much as we can,” Ny said. “I feel like nothing keeps us as busy as cleaning up at the moment.”