Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep # 127 DonutNV: The Mobile Sweet Treat Experience Coming to Your Next Event
Looking for a unique addition to your next party or event? Earnest Neal of DonutNV might have exactly what you're looking for. As the franchise owner of this mobile donut experience in Paramus, Earnest brings freshly-made mini donuts directly to your doorstep.
What makes DonutNV special isn't just the product – it's the experience. Unlike traditional donut shops where pastries are made hours before serving, these mini treats are prepared right before your eyes. The custom trailer features a window where guests can watch the entire donut-making process, creating an interactive food experience that delights both children and adults alike. With 18 standard toppings and regular specialty additions, the customization options ensure everyone finds their perfect flavor combination.
The concept caters to various events – from birthday parties and weddings to corporate gatherings and school fundraisers. Earnest, who maintains his primary career in cybersecurity, started this business as an additional revenue stream, exemplifying how modern entrepreneurs are building diverse income portfolios. Since its founding in 2014 (originally as Cinnamony Donuts) and rebranding to DonutNV, the franchise has expanded to over 100 locations nationwide.
Beyond donuts, the trailer offers freshly squeezed lemonade in seven fruit flavors, coffee, and seasonal beverages like apple cider. Whether you're hosting an intimate backyard gathering or organizing a large community event, having fresh donuts made on-site creates a memorable experience that standard catering simply can't match. Ready to bring the sweet aroma of freshly-made donuts to your next event? Contact Earnest directly at 551-305-3678 or visit DonutNV.com to learn more about bringing this unique food experience to your next gathering.
DonutNV Paramus
Earnest Neal
(551) 305-3678
paramus@donutnv.com
donutnv.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast brought to you by Bergen Neighbors Media Group. Today we're joined by Earnest Neal, a franchise owner in Paramus of a franchise called DonutNV. Earnest, welcome to the show, thank you. How's it going Good? So Donut NV is a mobile interactive food truck concept where, I guess, you go to people's homes and it's based on the name Donuts. I'd imagine you offer donuts, yes, what is Donut NV about? About, and what does the nv stand for?
Speaker 3:um, actually I don't have an answer to that. Okay, it's all donut nv. Um, it's a franchise that was started, uh, I want to say back in 2014. Uh, and originally it started out with a different name and then they changed the name. I guess marketing rebranded the the product and launched it as donut envy. Um, so the donuts are mini donuts. Uh, they're not regular sized donuts like you would get at, say, like a duncan donuts. Krispy Kreme, we have 18 toppings and we also add additional toppings, at least one extra a month or for three months, whatever the case may be. We do freshly squeezed lemonade as well as coffee. We do corporate events, birthday parties, graduations, fundraisers. We've done some interesting fundraisers for some schools.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's Nice. So it's a food truck that comes to your. I mean, if you have a party at your house, you guys come to the house.
Speaker 3:Correct. So we've been to parties, people's houses, we've been to festivals at parks. We've been to private corporate events.
Speaker 2:So yeah, Nice, are you guys mostly like spring, summer, fall, or do you do stuff in the winter as well?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll try to do stuff in the winter weather permit. Winter is obviously a little more difficult in the northeast area, but not impossible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Okay. So how long have you? So you're based in Paramus, right? So is there one DonutNV franchise in each county or are there more in Bergen County?
Speaker 3:I believe I'm the only one currently in Bergen County and, once again, like I said, it's a fairly new franchise. So there is one other gentleman that bought a franchise. I think it's Passaic County that he's residing you know, right now. But I do know of others that are coming. It's a grown franchise. I want to say now they're well over 100 franchisees since 2014.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, I see there's one in Paramus and then there's one in Egg Harbor.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's South Jersey, more like near Atlantic City.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and you know, according to the timeline 2014, it was Cinnamony Donuts.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, philadelphia, yeah, and then um expanded to florida, and then yeah, change the headquarter right and then started the franchise in 2019 and uh and now, as you said, there's over 100 uh trailers.
Speaker 3:I guess they're not called food trucks, they're trailers correct, although they have started uh, a food portion of the franchise, so I think they may have rolled out two or three food trucks currently. So the food trucks are there I got in last year Not sure if the trailer or the food truck the easiest thing with the food truck would be. It's a lot easier to maneuver. As you start to drive the trailer, you get a lot more experience. It's a little trickier driving a trailer if you've ever driven a trailer on the road or having to get it in a particular space.
Speaker 3:It's a little different, so I have a newfound respect for truck drivers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so why not a food truck? The trailer's just bigger.
Speaker 3:Well, some of the instances, I guess early, some of the Franchisees were able to find Locations where they could just leave the trailer, set it up, leave it there. Don't know if you necessarily Want to do that with a food truck, I don't know, but it takes up, I guess, a little less Space, not much, but a little less space. Trail is just under 20 feet Long and, you know, just under 10 feet wide.
Speaker 2:It's like not eight feet and some change, so a little under nine feet wide actually so so say, I want to book a uh, you know a donut, and the truck at my party, um, you guys pull up. So there's many donuts, different flavors. I'm sure you have just plain donuts, right? You don't have to have all these tutti frutti flavors, correct, are they made there in the truck?
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, they're made on the spot. So the thing that separates us from your historic Dunkin' Donuts is the fact that they're made on the spot. There's a little window where you can actually see the donuts being made. Little kids love it. Adults love it as well. They like to look see. We bag them and tap them. You can see right through the window. People are familiar with Krispy Kreme, or Krispy Kreme filling with the red light on Nice to be in. It's made fresh and hot.
Speaker 2:That's great. That's great. So, and as you said, as beverages go, you have lemonade and then seven different fruit flavors, and coffees, hot cocoa, apple cider, so I guess that's popular in the fall, you know yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Apple cider is, you know, definitely more popular in the September October time frame.
Speaker 2:Nice. So if you're, if you're, my neighbor had an ice cream truck at her daughter's party years ago when we first moved to the town. I'm in now and you know, like an ice cream truck, everybody stands in line, you order your ice cream and you go. I guess, like for a party, you could order a bag, since they're small donuts. You order a bag and your beverage and then take it to the backyard or wherever it is, or if you're doing a corporate event or a truck day or farmer's market. That's how it works. People are not just ordering one, they're probably getting a bag full.
Speaker 3:Correct. Yeah, it comes. The bag says six. I put eight in a bag. Okay, sometimes more, uh, based on where we are in the batter and the mix yeah, okay, sometimes it starts to come out a little small, so I'll give you a few extra to make up got it, got it nice, so.
Speaker 2:So how did you get into this business? What'd you do before you owned this franchise?
Speaker 3:Actually an. It cybersecurity firm. I was just looking for something else to do to bring in another stream of revenue. So my interest was to start out with the franchise, get it going and then just find a manager to manage the truck and book some locations and just actually just create another stream of revenue.
Speaker 2:Right, okay, so you're not actually going to these events. You have people that run that for you.
Speaker 3:Currently I am.
Speaker 2:Okay, I thought it was a good idea to learn the business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I have an idea of how things work, what troubles you can run into. Once I'm ready to pass it down, I'll be speaking from experience. It's best to do it this way.
Speaker 2:This is the way to start, finish what to expect, yeah. So when did you back up a second? When did you buy the franchise? When did you start?
Speaker 3:I think I put the down payment on in the March April of last year.
Speaker 2:Okay Of last year. Yeah, so you've had a full. This is your second season going into it.
Speaker 3:Actually no, so we put the down payment on, but they got to build the trailer. You got to go to training, so yeah. Finally didn't get the trailer until around the July timeframe and did the first event in August, but that was more toward the end of the season.
Speaker 2:Right, okay. Now, when you do an event, is it they pay for an hourly rate plus the donuts they buy, or is it everything included?
Speaker 3:Well, we have different versions. So let's just look at it from a paid event versus a open vending event. Paid event a customer will contact us, will let us know the headcount and what they would like to be served during that headcount. So sometimes it could just be the mini donuts, mini donuts and lemonade, or mini donuts, lemonade, coffee. Whatever the case may be, they'll prepay for whatever package they want combo package.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And we go from there Open vending um. We have our signs up for our flavors, uh, size cups that we offer and the price got it, got it.
Speaker 2:So if I'm, obviously, if somebody's doing a party, you're driving out there, you're dropping your truck, you know you there's got to be some kind of flat fee and then whatever people actually buy, I guess, or you know.
Speaker 1:But I'd imagine if I'm hosting an event.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to make my guests pay for the donuts, you know. I mean I guess you keep track and then you just charge the client at the end.
Speaker 3:Oh, definitely so. Most clients are pretty accurate and they overpay to make sure that their guests have plenty. Right, and if they want, we'll leave them the exact amount that they paid for for leftovers. We recently did a wedding and that's exactly what we did and they basically said any overs they gave to the staff that hosted their event and the staff really loved it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, nice, nice. So this is like a part-time thing for you, or did you quit your IT job to do this?
Speaker 3:No, no, no, Still doing stuff in the IT space, Right, and doing this for the lack of better terms. I'm writing proposals, managing projects, things of that nature which doesn't require me to be on site and not Right Every day day to day. Um yeah at the level that I'm looking at things, so this gives me something to do, uh, from time to time so what are you doing?
Speaker 2:like, how do I never heard of you guys before? So how are people hearing about you? If you're on the corporate side, if you're on the residential side, like what do you guys do marketing wise?
Speaker 3:um, well, we have a facebook page. We have an instagram page, right here, I can send those to you. Uh, we uh advertise on different platforms. One of the platforms that I do have the most success with is called the bash okay, have the most success with is called the bash, okay, uh. The other one is roaming hunger.
Speaker 2:Uh, I haven't had a lot of success on roman hunger, but I am on there. So what are those are? Those are websites where people go to find, you know, different um vendor ideas correct.
Speaker 3:So they go there. Um, I guess they put in there that they're looking for desserts, hot dogs. They don't always have a good idea of exactly what they're looking for, but, yeah, they'll put on there that. I'll get an email that says, hey, this particular person is looking for such such, such such. I'll see if I'm available that day. I'll also see if I'm able to meet what they're looking for as far as from a dietary perspective, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Right, okay.
Speaker 3:Go from there.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of like an Angie's list or house where you know I go on there I'm looking for a instead of bathroom remodel or I'm looking for some kind of food truck and then you know if it says you know my area and I hit search and then I have yeah, well, this is glazed and confused.
Speaker 2:Fresh mini donut truck pops up, the mobile barista, or barista, the Ark Cafe, so that I typed in food. Oh, there you are, DonutNV, there you are, Okay, cool. So what makes you guys different than this other donut truck that popped up glazed and confused?
Speaker 3:Not sure what they do. I just know what we do, um, but, as I stated, you know, we have the mobile trailer, uh with the uh window, where you can watch us cook the donuts yeah yeah, it's, it's a nicely done trailer, if you, if you see the pictures yeah, no, no, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so when we do like school fundraisers.
Speaker 3:We did an elementary school. Few of them kids love it, you know they walk up. They make their parents come up, so yeah, Nice, nice.
Speaker 2:So what? What's the best way for people to to people to reach?
Speaker 3:you guys if they're looking for an event to have a donut truck, well, you can call me directly at area code 551-305-3678. We have our Facebook page which I sent you, the Facebook page and Instagram. You can contact us on there.
Speaker 2:And that's DonutsNV. Yes, donutsnv.
Speaker 3:DonutsNV. Yes, donutsnv, donutsnvcom. You have that option.
Speaker 2:And then you also have my email which is.
Speaker 3:Paramus at DonutsNVcom.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay, that's great. So listen, I think it's pretty cool. I love hearing you know. When you go on your website you see what the truck looks like. You can see a video of the donuts being made.
Speaker 2:I think anybody remembers the old Dunkin Donuts commercials. It was like time to make the donuts when I was growing up actually made the donuts on site. You can see them in the back room making them. So, and you know there's a lot of donut shops popping up. So obviously people you know, in a health conscious world everybody still loves their donuts. There's nothing like fresh donuts.
Speaker 2:I think there's an opening because Dunkin' Donuts, you go there you don't know when those donuts were made and they're baked in some central location somewhere and then they run out. They run out Like my son had a baseball game doubleheader the other day on a Saturday and the Dunkin' Donuts around the corner ran out of donuts. And it was 5 o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday and they had no more donuts. So you know, obviously if you're in the mood for a donut right now, you're not going to call it Donut NV, but I think the idea of a fun concept to kind of surprise your guests is pretty cool. So I just want to thank you so much for being on the show Bear with us. We're just going to have Chuck say goodbye and you and I will be right back All right, Doug.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.