Hypnotic Donuts

Hypnotic Donuts

Industry	Doughnut Shop
Founded	June 2010 (2010-06) in Dallas, Texas
Founders	Amy and James St. Peter
Products	Donuts and Biscuits
Website	www.hypnoticdonuts.com

Hypnotic Donuts is a small chain of doughnut shops, with its first store in Dallas, Texas^[1] and another in Denton, Texas.^[2] Amy St. Peter and James St. Peter founded it in 2010. In addition to donuts, they also make chicken biscuits. It was the first doughnut shop to purvey vegan doughnuts in Dallas, Texas.^[3]

History

After working in corporate America for 18 years James decided it was time for change. He began to notice that in all of the tedious meetings he had to attend that there was one common thread, donuts! Upon arriving at this realization James decided he was ready to evade corporate America, and he saw Dallas needed a change in its donut offerings.

James and Amy determined that Hypnotic Donuts would be different in every way, especially in how it would be conceived and launched. James then approached a donut shop that he frequented in Plano, TX, asked the owner’s son if his father would be interested in teaching James how to produce donuts, and the young man responded in the affirmative provided the training would begin at midnight. The formal training took about 3 weeks because of the language barrier, but because James had filmed all the lessons, he was able to continue his education by just watching the videos in his home.

James practiced at home with non-commercial equipment and learned to make decent donuts. Next, James want back to the same donut shop and got permission to come in during off-hours to experiment on making his own donuts. Time passed, but he finally perfected his own donuts and prepared himself to start selling them – gradually.

The donuts were sold exclusively via social media with a very limited amount of orders being taken. These orders were delivered by means of a black Ford Expedition in randomly selected parking lots with cash as the only payment method. As one customer described- “it is was like Miami Vice, here is my cash now hand me the box of goods.”

As its customer base increased, Hypnotic Donuts expanded by renting a pizza restaurant, selling donuts out of it from 7am-10:30am on weekends. At this time, donut sales were generated only by word of mouth. Patrons would remark, “I found this place because I was wondering why there was a line outside the door of a pizza shop at 7am.”

As business grew, Amy and James started thinking, possibly, they could really make this work. With all of the hype generated by sales, Jeanna Johnson of Good 2 Go Taco called James and said, “You need to open out here.” After drawing so much support, James approached 2 donut shops asking if they wanted to sell, to which the second shop approached said yes!

Hypnotic Donuts was first housed at 9007 Garland Road, but with such heavy donut connoisseur traffic, from all over the state, they opened a second location in Denton at 235 W. Hickory St between the downtown square and UNT campus. Hypnotic is now is the process of opening Hypnotic Emporium, a vintage candy and ice cream shop that will be located next door to Hypnotic Donuts in Dallas, on Garland Road.

Donuts & chicken biscuits

All donuts are trans-fat free, handmade, hand cut and made fresh throughout the day. They have co-workers in their kitchen at all times making fresh donuts and constantly refilling the display case. All icings, frostings and even the mustard for the biscuits are made in-house. The chicken biscuits were added to the menu six months after the opening of the Dallas store. All of the chicken is fresh, marinated 24 hours and cooked to order. Hypnotic Donuts has received numerous awards for their biscuits and because of this now uses the name Hypnotic Donuts and Biscuits.

Kaye- chicken, fresh jalapeño, whipped cream cheese and pepper jack Amy- chicken, pickles, honey, sharp cheddar, bacon, and vinegar mustard Maribeth- chicken, tator tots and white peppered gravy Olivia- chicken and honey Jim- spicy chicken served on a donut with maple syrup and Sriracha

Hypnotic donuts also produces unique, craft donuts.

Community

Hypnotic Donuts adheres to a "community first" approach. They have donated over $10,000 to various organizations throughout the Dallas and Denton, TX communities. The City of Dallas and Mayor Rawlings gave Mayoral Recognition of June 6, National Donut Day, as official Hypnotic Donut Day in Dallas. By 2015 Hypnotic Donuts has grown their charitable giving so substantially that they have been able to create a new umbrella called Team Hypnotic. Hypnotic Donuts Dallas and Denton as well as Hypnotic Emporium will be under this umbrella. Being a part of Team Hypnotic they are able to work with local charities, teams and organizations to help support their efforts. In one of their recent efforts Team Hypnotic donated over $3,000 to Carry The Load.

Aside from donating to many notable charities, Team Hypnotic also puts on 2 large annual events- The Hypnotic Donut Dash and The Hypnotic Polar Plunge. The Hypnotic Donut Dash occurs at The State Fair of Texas; it is a 5k run that has donut holes along the course and free donuts after the race. The Hypnotic Polar Plunge is the first Sunday in January and is used as a way to clean your soul for the New Year. Participants of the Polar Plunge gather at the FOE, they jump into and swim the length of the pool. Both events have proceeds donated to a charity. Not only do they engage in those events, Team Hypnotic is also an active participant in one of Dallas’ biggest events- The Greenville Ave Parade.

See also

• List of doughnut shops

References

Further reading

• DeBruler, Kathryn (September 8, 2014). "Denton Loves its New Hypnotic Donuts-Cultivar Coffee Shop, Judging by the Line". Dallas Observer. Retrieved June 11, 2015.