Because the hive knows all: Doughnuts and the machines that make them

RX Reven' said:

I see you're in Kentucky so I don't know if you've ever been to the Minnesota State Fair.

If you have, you'd know about Sweet Martha's Chocolate Chip Cookies; Absolute legend.

I realize that you've got an established customer base but baking is probably logistically easier than frying and the aroma of fresh cookies draws in customers.

Food at the Minnesota State Fair is legendary.

I haven't been there for years, but the mini donut booth at the MN state fair was always fascinating - the machine that made the donuts was behind a glass window so you watch them popping out into the fryer.  I assume they still use the same machine, it was part of the fun of buying them.  This is a 29 second video of the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUUYpLKeZgE 

It turns out the guy who runs the booth also sells a mini donut oven for use at convenience stores, movie theaters, etc. that apparently can produce up to 1200/ hour.  https://statefairminidonuts.com  Since it isn't a deep fat fryer I don't know if they taste the same,  It is a lot more compact and probably more convenient and easier to use for a church group, although it doesn't have the same curb appeal.

In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :

You're not wrong at all - we absolutely want to make sure we have a lot of volunteers because there's no better way to get to know people and feel connected to the parish than to spend a couple hours in a booth with them.  That said, just to man the booths during the festival hours requires 8 shifts of about 125-150 volunteers each if I had to guess, plus all the planning, setup, teardown, money room, and other "stuff".  And half of my labor is somewhat specialized - I tried putting the untrained behind the wheel of the fryers and mixer this year and it can be a little more difficult to get them up to speed.  If I can take 4 or 5 people out of my booth and release them to help with another one, it'll take at least a small load off of our team of recruiters.

It may be because our pool of volunteers is a little smaller (by design), but between the festival and the weekly Bingo over at the grade school at the other parish, I have found that it can be difficult to get volunteers and anything that I can do to make the work easier and more pleasant results in a much higher recidivism rate!  The biggest problem I have with volunteers, and where I have to really get creative, is when I have a bad one.  If I need to change someone's behaviour, I have no sticks, only a relatively small supply of slightly mis-shapen carrots.

If your stand isn't called the "Holy Holey's" then I think you should consider it. 

I got nothing on manufacturing donuts though

No advice, but now I'm hungry for donuts.  

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

I snorted when I read this. Couldn't help but think of Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction. I couldn't find a meme to put with this that I didn't think raised the risk of being struck by lightning since this is a church group or being banned since we are a civilized group. 

Doughnuts and the machines that make them... And nobody mentioned a blown Hemi?

Datsun310Guy said:

Nothing to add except my dad was fascinated with donut machine ls and talked about this book sometimes.  
 

came to thread to suggest not losing your ring in one.

( I GAWT IT! )

Talking to my wife, tentatively planning on going to the expo just because I like to see how things work :) it's like a COVID-era factory tour!

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :

Donut food truck! Drive that thing around to various construction sites at lunch time and watch the money come in.

It's really not a bad idea at all.

I would buy many of them and I guarantee a lot of people would too

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

Datsun310Guy said:

Nothing to add except my dad was fascinated with donut machine ls and talked about this book sometimes.  
 

came to thread to suggest not losing your ring in one.

 

( I GAWT IT! )

I couldn't believe "Homer Price" wasn't one of the tags.

I live in Seattle and we have year round farmer's markets.  There is a mini donut seller at one of the locations, every Saturday, they do quite the brisk business, so if you really felt like it that could be another avenue for sales.

And now it's time for the year later update:  We just wrapped up our festival weekend and I'm here to report back with my results!

I found a used Belshaw Adamatic Donut Robot Mark II at an auction that was being conducted over the Internet.  They were actually auctioning a huge catalog of "surplus from the ongoing operations of Kroger and 7-11" and they had a couple dozen of these machines.  For about $1,600 I was able to get the machine and have it shipped to me.  It needed a tiny bit of repair work and a really thorough cleaning, but it made it's debut performance this weekend.

It makes doughnuts that are about double the size of the ones that the old manual machines made and it will crank them out all day long at a rate of 16 doughnuts every two minutes.  Every single one is shaped perfectly, cooked perfectly, and requires almost no user intervention.  As long as there was batter mixed up to keep the hopper topped off and an occasional dab of cooking oil was added to keep the level right, it just ran for hours non-stop.

As I mentioned initially, I'd have to get to the festival hours before it opened to be able to fill the warmer.  This year, I was able to fill the warmer in just over an hour.  Over the weekend, I went through about 670 pounds of mix and made somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,700 doughnuts.  We would have done way more, but the Sunday crowd was super light, probably because of the threat of storms.  For the whole weekend, I threw out a mere fraction of mis-fried doughnuts compared to a single night previously, so much less waste.  I didn't have to spend the whole weekend trying to figure out why this batch wasn't right or why that batch didn't cook all the way and I never had to stop to let the oil come up to temperature.  For the first time in 5 years I got to actually have an enjoyable and relaxing festival!

So the learning here is that if you need to make doughnuts, this is absolutely the machine that you want.

Nice! I think I found the reason I need a bigger kitchen at home. 

Seems like a low barrier of entry for a decent side biz. I have a 13 year old boy who will need a job soon....

In reply to wae :

Was there any difference good or bad in the taste?  Is the batter the secret?

In reply to grover :

Well....  kep in mind that in addition to that, you've got to have a really decent mixer to keep the hopper fed.  We have a pair of 6qt machines that we borrow and we really should have at least one of the countertop 20qt ones.  And the household ones don't cut it - the bearings on ours have been screaming a bit ever since we brought ours up which is why we borrow now.  You'll need plenty of power - 30a 240v for the machine plus some lights, the mixer, something to deal with your water, and a warmer.  We buy slightly pricey supplies which makes our raw material costs right around $0.17 per for the mix and the shortening but not counting whatever you top them with - we have a choice of powdered sugar or cinnamon-sugar.  And then you've got your location:  You'll have to rent the space to use which can be pricey.  You could depend on places that have booths for you, but depending on what's going on in your geo there might not be enough options for that, so you probably would want to build out a trailer to work out of.  All told, I sold somewhere in the vicinity of 720 dozen doughnuts over the course of the weekend and it was about 140 man-hours to do that.  Now if you were working out of a self-contained trailer, you might be able to reduce that a little - we had one person in the kitchen making batter and another person who would carry it out to the booth.  If you could put the mixer right there next to you, you could easily make the mix and run the robot.

I'm not saying there isn't money to be made - and as food trucks go, this is probably one of the lower investments compared to your average sale.  But be prepared to work your tail off!

In reply to Stampie :

Huge difference!  And it was both the batter and the machine.  Apparently the whole process is predicated on the batter being at about 74 degrees when it hits the oil and the ratio of water to mix is very specific as well.  There's this whole complicated math formula to get the mix at the right temp:  (desired temp * 3) - (room temp + dry mix temp) = desired water temp.  Fortunately our mix is stored in the kitchen and the kitchen temperature is very steady at about 71 degrees.  In previous years, we would have pitchers of hot water and cold water and then take a while to mix them together to get them close to the right temp before measuring by volume and pouring in the mixer.  This year, I borrowed my brother's sous vide heater, set the temp, and then we used a scale to measure the water by weight.  So our batter was perfect every time with almost no variations.

The other part that made a much better-tasting doughnut was the fact that every one was the same.  They all cooked for the same amount of time on each side and were the exact same shape and size.  Because they only cooked in the oil for as long as they needed to and because the oil never got too cold, they soaked up way less oil than with the manual machines, so they're less greasy, soft and cake-y on the inside, with the gentlest crunch on the outside.

So, uh, want to bring it to the $2000 Challenge? 

In reply to wae :

How many test runs did you do and did you gain a lot of weight "testing". 

I cannot confirm the total number of doughnuts that I consumed, but if I were you, if we were betting on the percentage of my caloric intake over the last week that came from doughnuts, I'd take the over on 60%

Now I think I need to learn to TIG so I can get some stainless and make a cart for it...

I ran a donut robot for 3 years in high school and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.  Great machine. 

We swapped from oil to shortening in it while I was working there and it made clean up a lot better and less oil mess on the machine and the donuts.