Will I make donuts and coffee

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Will I make donuts and coffee

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Leperflesh posted:

The other part that keeps screaming out as a red flag is your unwillingness to be trained in any way. I saw the cool wrestling belts. Did you get to that level of wrestling without any coach, or any sparring partner, or any training at all? Just hang out in your basement, watch some wrestling videos, do some moves at a mirror, and then head straight to the state championships? Did you start wrestling in September and then start winning trophies by December?

I think it's likely that you benefitted from coaching and training and a hell of a lot of practice, not just practice by yourself in theory but actual wrestling match practice. The analogy would be actual commercial baking practice, in a real kitchen. I understand you can't do that because you have a full time job. That would suggest that your odds of success on opening day (your most important chance to make an impression and gain customers is your first month) are about what a high school kid with zero wrestling experience would have showing up to a big event and jumping into the ring to face off against guys who have been doing it for years. I think you should budget in your startup capital to hire an experienced baker to do all of your baking and to teach you how to bake. If you can't fit that into your budget I don't think this is going to work out.

This whole post is spot on but particularly this last bit. (I also just read this entire thread from start to finish over the last couple of days.) The idea of just jumping into running a baking business and figuring it out as you go, despite literally every person with the tiniest bit of experience telling you not to, is kind of fascinating in a morbid, car-crash sort of way. Especially given the fact that Rationale is a plumber, a profession that requires training to understand best practices that have been built on decades of accumulated wisdom. Imagine one of us explaining that we were opening a plumbing business but didn't have time to do any sort of apprenticeships or read any boring regulations and building codes. "Home Depot has metal pipes, some of them are threaded, I'll just buy that and screw them all together. Bing bang boom, how hard can it be? Besides, what does Rationale really know anyway, he's just being negative. Wait until he sees the little fountain I installed in my backyard!" He would rightly call them insane.

That said, I am rooting for you Rationale (assuming this isn't a troll). It would be cool to see someone build something like this starting from nothing.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2022 22:37

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 21:34

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Second Location Donuts

# ¿ Nov 19, 2022 00:47

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

The first batch had interior shots, it looked like a pretty nice place to get murdered.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2022 04:16

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

brb someone gave me a big pile of mismatched PVC and a broken toilet so I figure I should start a commercial plumbing business with it

# ¿ Nov 19, 2022 19:02

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

does anyone know how to connect a toilet to a sewer line with PVC? What kind of glue should I buy?

# ¿ Nov 19, 2022 19:12

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Sounds like you should be in the bagel business instead. Undercut them at $80/dozen with cream cheese. Figure you sell 100 dozen a day and you�re looking at an easy $240,000 per month minus expenses.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2022 22:30

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Those look delicious.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2022 19:48

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Rationale, I hope when you read posts like the above you understand why people were (a) skeptical from the outset and (b) hammering on the need for a business plan before you start sinking money into this. They're not trying to block you from riches, they're trying to make sure you go into a very difficult and risky endeavor with your eyes fully open. How much will converting that building into a nice-looking space with a paved and easily-accessible drive thru cost? Can you actually afford to pay $40/hour for each worker? Specifically, imagine the hours when no one is coming by -- are you going to be side-eyeing that employee and mentally tallying the money you're paying them to stand there with you? Treating your workers well goes beyond paying them a fair wage, you have to also provide a decent work environment, i.e. not being lovely to them because you can't really afford them. There's a reason small business owners have a reputation for being tyrants, the labor costs are personal to them.

And whoever asked if you'll actually close when you go through your initial runway, this is a really key question. The time to decide if you want to mortgage your house over this idea is now, not when you're out of cash but feel like it just might turn around if you only had another six months. It's going to be very hard to know if you are throwing good money after bad until you're deep in the hole.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2022 20:24

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

From everything people with baking experience in this thread have said, one of the biggest challenges of the business is the repetition. Even if you aren't producing a lot of donuts, it seems like it would be valuable for you to make multiple batches every single day for weeks/months at a time and see if it's how you want to spend your time well after the novelty has worn off. Even if you throw them in the garbage, it's probably a better investment from a risk mitigation standpoint than just about anything else you can do right now, since setting up the whole operation and then realizing you actually hate making donuts for six hours a day will be a pretty expensive discovery.

I'm getting the vibe that you like the problem-solving aspects of starting this business (e.g. figuring out the best way to make donuts, optimizing the process, designing the kitchen, sourcing the equipment, etc.) than the business itself. Which is kind of like having kids because you love newborn babies.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2022 22:55

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Admiralty Flag posted:

Will Rationalized Donuts make me move to Ohio so I can hook myself up to a Homer-in-Hell-style donut feeding machine?

I mean, the building Rationale showed us definitely has the right ambience for such a machine. I�m pretty sure they filmed at least one of the Saw movies there.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2022 19:35

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Rationale posted:

Why would I want to spend my time putting out cheap slop?

Whatever you do every day I�m sure you�re at least aiming to do a nice job of it.

I�d like to get it where people are like �oh -you- do the donuts? How do you make them so good?� �Where�d you get this coffee?� �Would you be interested in giving a Ted talk?�

"Oh, you used 'self-rising dough'? What is that, exactly?" "And your main expertise is plumbing, you say?" "Have you ever had a donut?"

# ¿ Dec 4, 2022 20:55

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Sweet Pea is a terrible name. Luckily, I don�t think it will decrease your chances for success, as they are already quite firmly at zero.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2022 19:05

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

https://twitter.com/ekai/status/1601305102501175296

# ¿ Dec 10, 2022 20:29

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Rationale posted:

I�m gonna bake something at some point

This is a pretty solid thread title contender as well.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2022 19:48

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Admiralty Flag posted:

He got a burn permit for all his cash.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2022 22:15

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Rationale posted:

Drive-through coffee was appealing because there isn�t much local competition and the inputs are relatively cheap. Then of course it would include espresso drinks because people will only pay so much for drip.

Then we looked at how many people we could possibly serve in a given day and concluded that if our average ticket was only $3 we couldn�t make money with an all-day rush. We couldn�t really lean into the premium espresso angle because nobody here gives enough of a poo poo to pay an extra $2 for their stimulants. We had to add food.

Rationale posted:

Those numbers are pretty pie-in-the-sky. Doable and feasible aren�t the same thing. With a simple enough menu where people pull up and say �this and that� and pull around with exact change we can hit an order every 20 seconds but accounting for silly billies on either side of the till can triple that timeframe or more.

Luckily 200 cars a day spending $5 each will net me something like $600 so I�m not scared

You're so deliberately obtuse that I hope for your sake this is all an elaborate troll and you're not actually going to put any real money into this. Everything you've posted is so inconsistent and contradictory and flat-out dumb, it boggles the mind. Drive thru orders every 20 seconds? Have you ever gone through a drive thru? Or interacted with the public in any way? They're slow as poo poo and they get mad when you rush them. Can you make an espresso in 20 seconds? How long a line of cars can you accommodate before they spill out into the street? Are you going to install a menu and speaker with a separate window for payment and pickup? How much will that cost (on top of paving the whole parking lot)? Are you going to take all the orders, fill all the orders, make all the coffees and collect all the money yourself? Will you be doing this after baking donuts all night/morning? Or will you hire an employee or two, at which point how many donuts do you have to sell just to cover their wages?

There's a reason everyone told you to make a business plan, quite a few ventures only work if certain conditions are met. You don't even know what those conditions are, let alone whether you can meet them.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2022 22:14

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Guys, it can't be a troll, Rationale drew up plans! There's a kitchen rectangle and a dining room rectangle! You just need to add 200 customers/day to the plan and you're done.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2022 19:32

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

I would 100% eat a brioche donut filled with chocolate cream, that sounds very tasty.

Also, I know there's no way to calculate what it costs to make a donut or how much to sell it for, but butter has apparently gotten more expensive lately. This article describes a bakery in Amherst, Ohio having to pay $3.50/pound for butter compared with $2.00/pound from last year.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2022 18:45

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Giraffe posted:

I'm getting the vibe that you like the problem-solving aspects of starting this business (e.g. figuring out the best way to make donuts, optimizing the process, designing the kitchen, sourcing the equipment, etc.) than the business itself. Which is kind of like having kids because you love newborn babies.

I feel like you maybe took away the wrong message from this post, Rationale.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2023 22:53

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Volmarias posted:

Are these bugs, turds, rocks, or what

Sprinkles.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2023 05:18

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Rationale posted:

E: just need to make 20k off that disgusting piece of poo poo and then I�ll have machines to do all my work!

Given how much interest you�ve shown in making donuts yourself, it�s basically your only hope at this point. Plus robots are less likely to get hantavirus from working in that murdershack.

# ¿ May 1, 2023 15:51

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Rationale posted:

I think this weekend I�ll try medu vada and then some box cake mix

I don�t have high hopes for either one but I�m posting for a roasting either way

Why not make a few batches of the actual donuts you�ve proposed selling? Then a few more? I know it�s boring to make the same thing over and over (or at all), but it might add some clarity for when you get back to shopping.

# ¿ May 4, 2023 15:36

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Rationale posted:

It might please you to know that the fritters came out like poo poo

Didn�t soak long enough, batter too thick, dropper wasn�t working so I did them by hand and they were too big, took on too much oil, generally hosed in every conceivable fashion, pics to come the day is young

Don�t beat yourself up. You can try again with a totally different recipe in another six months.

# ¿ May 8, 2023 05:48

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Anne Whateley posted:

Not sure nursing homes are known for letting their olds drive around wherever and eat junk food constantly

You're not from Ohio, I see.

# ¿ May 16, 2023 02:04

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Leperflesh posted:

your town may have a problem with using a residential lot for commercial parking lot, and you might want to like, check about that before buying a house to do that to
also a donut shop probably does need more than six parking places, I wonder if maybe this crappy old building on a gravel lot with not much parking is really the ideal place to open a donut shop, oh well nevermind just wrassle your way past these obstacles with gumption

Look, none of this matters, he has no choice. He was given this building, therefore he has to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to turn it into a donut shop. His hands are tied!

# ¿ May 28, 2023 18:24

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 21:34

Giraffe: Dec 12, 2005; Soiled Meat

Now I'm even sadder that Rationale is never going to open his donut shop because he's clearly one of those owners who would argue with every bad Yelp review and that would be fun to read.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2023 00:39

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Will I make donuts and coffee