How the Doughnut Project Shop Built One of the Most Popular Donuts in NYC

Episode Transcript

[00:00:08] Will Schreiber: This is Leslie, founder of Donut Project.

We'll do an official introduction again here in a second. But what is your morning routine? Your coffee routine?

[00:00:16] Leslie Polizzotto: And you're asking me, right?

[00:00:17] Will Schreiber: I'm asking you. Yeah, Leslie.

[00:00:20] Leslie Polizzotto: I, when I wake up, I usually drink a little bit of water. That's leftover on my bed stand from the night before. I always have water.

And then after that water's done, I go to, I have an espresso machine and I do 2 pods and I pull long shots of those longos. and I drink it black and I drink the two shots, in one cup. And then after that, I usually do not drink any more coffee. And that's usually around 7 a. m.

[00:00:49] Will Schreiber: So you're and I think context for everyone, you used to go into a shop to make donuts every morning.

What was your routine then? Did you use the espresso machine at the Donut [00:01:00] Project?

[00:01:00] Leslie Polizzotto: I did not. I did not drink coffee. Once I got there, I pulled shots on my beautiful La Marzocco GB5 dual handle espresso machine. That was the most expensive piece of equipment in the shop. And I did, but I didn't drink. I don't know why I just.

One, I didn't really have time and I like coffee when it's really hot. So if it sits around, if I have to set it down, I don't want it anymore. So I just, once in a blue moon, I might pull a shot and have,

[00:01:30] Will Schreiber: yeah, it

[00:01:31] Leslie Polizzotto: wasn't a habit.

[00:01:32] Will Schreiber: Yeah. Interesting. That, that would have been my guilty pleasure if I was in your shoes.

A lot of questions. I'm even curious what happened to the espresso machine, but we'll talk about that later. So to give everyone an introduction, Leslie and I are both in New York right now, Leslie is the founder of the Donut Project. Which has, and has a fascinating story leading up to before Donut Project.

And now what she's doing now that she's exited that business was a Bottle customer [00:02:00] and which I loved. And the shop was actually in the neighborhood that I live in. Which was really cool. So before we get into the discussion, I also want to give a shout out. I see Lou is in here from Smash Meals

Lou had pushed us to do a meal delivery conference. Which we did in Nashville. And I know we emailed out to everyone about that. It was amazing. It was like so fun meeting so many people in person. So I just want to give a heads up, like we're going to be doing more of those around the country and getting people together and with love.

For everyone listening, if we could find a way to convene for a conference at some point okay, back to the coffee chat today. So I see this as a two part conversation. So Leslie founder of Donut Project, we're going to start talking about her journey. What the Donut Project was all about, how she grew Instagram and over 200, 000 followers marketed the business.

And then part two of the discussion, her realizations as an entrepreneur. What it's like thinking through life and running a [00:03:00] business and what she's up to now. So throughout the conversation, please toss in questions to the Q&A, and we'll get to them as it's relevant throughout the talk.

But yeah, to start out Leslie, give us the, as quick as you can backstory to what then led you to open the Donut Project.

[00:03:18] Leslie Polizzotto: It's a very unusual path. I was actually a lawyer practicing law in Los Angeles, California. And my husband had a lot of business in New York. So we would go to New York a lot and I would always tag along and work out of my law firm's New York office work out of it.

And I would always have everything curated with like food. I was totally a foodie and defined dining. I knew about chefs. I knew, I was really into the food scene. And I my husband and I decided we were gonna move to New York. It was good for his business and I really wanted to do it because I was in love with New York and I'm an East Coast person.

So California was fine for 12 years. But after that, you're done with it pretty [00:04:00] much. I met a guy who was a bartender and we became friends because we would frequent where he works. And we would come to New York and he told me he wanted to open a donut shop and I pulled out my phone. I showed him pictures of donuts on my phone.

I said, I love donuts. They make me so happy. I'm moving to New York. Maybe I can help you write a business plan, raise capital. It was like exciting to me, to be involved in a food business. So long story short moved to New York. It was right after Sandy hit and my law firm didn't, the, their office was underwater, and, they were like we can't really have you start right away.

So I started diving into this donut deal and the more I got into it, the more I loved it and said, I'm just gonna do this. So my law firm said, okay, we're ready. I said, Nope, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna have open, own my own business and I'm not gonna do that. Opened the Donut Project in October of 2015. Completely never owned my own business. My partner at the time had never owned a business. New York has the highest [00:05:00] failure rate of any city in the world. It is super competitive. We stupid naive to even try it, but we did.

[00:05:07] Will Schreiber: Yeah, that's always the case. I feel you have to be too naive to give it a go.

[00:05:11] Leslie Polizzotto: Yeah.

[00:05:12] Will Schreiber: What drew you in? Like why donuts? Why, what got you excited?

[00:05:16] Leslie Polizzotto: I just loved them. I used to eat them. I grew up in the South and I only knew Krispy Kreme. And that's literally the only donut shops that were there. And then when I moved to California, there were donut shops everywhere, all these mom and pop Korean shops and just, they were different kinds and people would bring them in huge boxes to the office.

And I would notice how everybody would laugh and get around them and, make jokes and it brought some relief into a very tense daily life. Of a litigation attorney in downtown Los Angeles. So it was joyful instead of negative.

[00:05:52] Will Schreiber: And so was that part of the vision of the Donut Project of more fun flavors and sort of Krispy Kreme had, but in New York, like where they're [00:06:00] not people doing that here.

[00:06:01] Leslie Polizzotto: No one was doing it here or anywhere. And my old business partner was a bartender had worked in fine dining and I was a huge foodie, so it made sense to take inspiration for food and cocktail from food and cocktails for our flavors. And that's what kind of set us apart from everyone and actually set us on a path of gaining notoriety and publicity all for free, literally changing our lives overnight because of what we were doing.

[00:06:30] Will Schreiber: Yeah. Let's dig into that in a second. I'm curious to set the scene. What did you guys open? Was it a shop? Where was it? How did you figure out where to open? And then let's talk about, yeah, because I think what you did to build the business and do partnerships with was super interesting.

[00:06:44] Leslie Polizzotto: Yeah, no, we had a retail storefront in the West Village of Manhattan. It was on Morton Street right off of Bleaker, which is a highly traffic, foot traffic tourism heart of, Greenwich Village, West Village area. And we were right off the [00:07:00] corner because we couldn't. Afford to be on Bleaker.

The corner spot on Bleaker was 27, 000 a month for not even 500 square feet and our location of 725 square feet was 8, 000. So we were like, okay, we'll take that 1 and it ended up being a beautiful street and we ended up becoming a destination. So it didn't matter where we were. People would have come to us if we were, hanging off the cliff, they would have come to us.

The location was a financial thing, but ended up being just fine. And in a beautiful neighborhood of New York City

[00:07:36] Will Schreiber: and same place. It was to the end you guys

[00:07:40] Leslie Polizzotto: original location that we, I closed down in February. Yeah.

[00:07:44] Will Schreiber: Yeah, cool. And then okay, so then what were you serving?

You were like, so you found this shop and then what was your vision for the donuts you would sell?

[00:07:52] Leslie Polizzotto: We had like from day one, we had a bacon maple bar on it. A bar shaped donut is a Midwest West [00:08:00] Coast thing that no one does here. And so all the West Coast Midwest people who come to New York are thrilled to get our bar shaped donut.

We did an olive oil black pepper donut. Nobody had ever heard of it ever, and we called it the Bronx, and it was very stayed on the menu the entire time. But a really important one was our beet and ricotta donut. We called it those beats are dope and it was a ricotta filling and a beet glaze. We literally went to the the bodega on the corner and got beats and cut off the greens and juice the beats and made a glaze from it.

And that's the donut that actually want us a donut competition when we were only 3 months old.

[00:08:44] Will Schreiber: I've had that one as well. I, and this is even this talk, I'm like, we should have told everyone to bring doughnuts because otherwise we're going to be thinking about it the whole time. So then, okay.

So you're three months in, you have all these flavors. Like, how did you think about marketing the business and actually growing?

[00:08:59] Leslie Polizzotto: We had absolutely [00:09:00] no money because when we signed the lease, they gave us three months, four months free for us to do renovations and the renovations, of course, took six months.

We were literally paying rent for two months without getting any revenue. We were woefully undercapitalized. The whole thing should have crumbled many times, but it didn't just from sheer. Determination and I don't quit and I won't quit until it works. We had no money for advertising and there was this little thing that was just becoming really popular and it was called Instagram.

And. Didn't have algorithms. You post it on Instagram and it could go out there and go viral. No, we would have videos go viral for a million views. And, just by posting no pain, no, whatever. Now, it's almost impossible to do that. But at the time. Food and Instagram was becoming a big thing.

You started having people posting about food. This is 2015. That's how just not too long ago. This all came about foodies [00:10:00] and influencers. So I just reached out to a couple people that. Seem to like food and had food, feeds and invited them to come taste the donuts. And if they liked them, please post about them.

And that's what they did. So, at the time influencers was what they became um, free products. So they were easy to get in and they would post on their feeds. So then you would get exposure to their followers as well. So that's Organically, which is the only way I've ever done it, is how I grew our following.

And then it's crazy to

[00:10:31] Will Schreiber: think that's less than 10 years old. No, I know. That was 2015. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:35] Leslie Polizzotto: I know. It's like how quickly we've gone to, it was the Wild West. You could post on there and if you had a hundred thousand followers, all a hundred thousand followers would get that, that post.

Nowadays that's not the case. Yeah. It's a completely different ball game. So we were fortunate enough to get the publicity and press from Instagram when it was, free and fair.

[00:10:58] Will Schreiber: So then what did you do? I [00:11:00] know it's a different world now, but I think it's, interesting going back and diagnosing, like what were the strategies you use to grow your following because you're right at that, especially back then it was way less about going viral on like the reels feed and more getting people to follow you.

Exactly.

[00:11:17] Leslie Polizzotto: Yeah, it was just post. So yeah, no, I, it all really came from inviting people to come taste and there was this one influencer called Food Baby Mike Chow, who at the time only had one child and I invited him to come taste a donut that we were thinking about releasing on our menu because it was really crazy and outside of the box and we were a little concerned that we were pushing the envelope a little bit too much.

It was called the Everything Donut. And so he came and tasted the donut and he took one home and took a picture of it with his son's face in the middle of the donut hole and posted on his feed that afternoon. We got a call from Gothamist, which is a. Website here in based in New York. That [00:12:00] is was heavily into food and lifestyle and all that stuff.

And they called the shop and they were like, Hey, we just saw this doughnut on the feed. Can you tell us about it? So we did a short story over the phone and. Literally the next day we were like, okay, how many of these should we make? Cause it's really weird. The everything donut, cream cheese, everything, bagel topping on a donut.

Literally the phone started ringing off the hook and it was ABC news, NBC news papers from London. Every daytime TV show in New York City wanted it on their set to have filming with it. It literally changed our life overnight. We were four months old.

Wow. It

was, it was insane. And again, nothing like that would happen today.

I really, it's really hard for anything like that to happen, but it,

[00:12:48] Will Schreiber: yeah, the shock and awe, it changed our

[00:12:50] Leslie Polizzotto: life. And with that press, the newspaper articles, the online articles, all of those articles bundled [00:13:00] everyone to us and they followed us. And so we just grew our following for free, but through Traditional forms of media that were keeping an eye on the social media.

So it was a link to it. But yeah, so overnight we were known to the world.

[00:13:18] Will Schreiber: And then how did you see that happen and dream up or think about other ways to leverage Instagram and like beyond just the influencer stuff? Like, how did you think about, wow, we've got to keep building our following here or is that not really, was that not really your goal?

[00:13:34] Leslie Polizzotto: I really wanted to grow our following, but it we were just so fortunate that We started getting requests to do collaborations and partnerships. I don't know if you want to talk about that now, but that's another way that we grew our following was that we would partner with other brands and do these special donuts for them.

And they would, have these huge PR teams that would coordinate all of this stuff to go [00:14:00] along with the release of the donut. And we would send donuts to media and influencers. And so again, that would just continue to grow. We were touching more and more people's lives and they would become fans and our following would just grow and grow.

So it was purpose, purposely done, but our growth came from our collaboration, marketing tactics,

[00:14:23] Will Schreiber: right? Yeah, that's, I don't know if I knew that side of it because so for everyone listening, I think every week Leslie would feature. In my mind it was a collab, like a new donut with a partner of some kind.

And like you've worked with Jiffy I know. And some other companies. But I didn't realize, and I, and this was happening before there was even the word drop

[00:14:43] Leslie Polizzotto: or collaboration, didn't know

[00:14:44] Will Schreiber: they or collab.

[00:14:45] Leslie Polizzotto: Yeah. I didn't realize

[00:14:47] Will Schreiber: The initial ones just came in from the press, like initially of let's partner together.

[00:14:52] Leslie Polizzotto: Since my business partner was a bartender and I was a huge drinker we always had a cocktail donut on the menu too. [00:15:00] And so that was something novel and different from everyone else. So not only do we have bacon, olive oil, black pepper beets, cheeses, we had, old fashioned cocktail donuts.

We had, I make, bourbon, maple donut, we always had a alcohol one on the menu. So all of these alcohol brands started reaching out and saying, we'll send you the alcohol. Can you make a, donut for this event or for this release of a new, wine or a new alcohol flavor or something.

So we just, we had a. In our basement had a case a cage full of alcohol that we would get because they would send us so much stuff. It was insane. And so through those collaborations, that's how we became known for doing collaborations. And when that gets seen by eyes of other. PR people, then they reach out with their clients.

Oh, I have a brand who's releasing a new cheese. Can you do a donut with that? Sure. Here's the rules, the product we sell it, we promote [00:16:00] your brand. It was just became a strategy that I set up a process around and we would try to, we'd had many collaborations. The list is long.

But if we didn't have one at a certain point I started implementing. A different part of a weekend special, whereas we would just come up with something ourselves that was for the three day window.

[00:16:21] Will Schreiber: Yeah. So that really became core to your strategy. Like I need a new, I need a new thing each week.

[00:16:26] Leslie Polizzotto: New York City, there's carts on the streets that sell donuts for a dollar. Granted, you're getting a dollar donut. There was competition, like their donut plant had been here for 20 years. Dough was here before we were. There was enough, there was lots of donut shops. So in New York, you can't just open a donut shop or anything and be just like other people.

You will not succeed. You have to be different. And we were just fortunate that was what we wanted to do anyways. We didn't know that. We had no idea. We had never tried to run a food business in New York and understand, [00:17:00] oh, you have to be different. But we were, and that's what made us successful. And then I realized you can't just sell chocolate glazed donuts.

That's not going to work,

especially

for, to meet your rent and your labor costs. My donuts were not cheap at all. Like they weren't right. dollar donut cart. Donuts.

[00:17:20] Will Schreiber: Yeah. I think one interesting takeaway or just observation between what you've done with donut that's high end donut market, and then, we service mostly meal delivery companies as everyone tells us that the number one, most read email is always new menu item, new menu alert.

And it's interesting observing that same phenomenon with you. I'm like, that was so important of something new every week for someone to check in on.

[00:17:43] Leslie Polizzotto: 100%. And that's how I, use Instagram. That was how I communicated to people. Here's what. This weekend special is going to be, it's a collaboration with Angry Orchard, apple cider, and we're doing hard apple cider fritters, you know, in the Ross sponsored my sugar for my [00:18:00] apple cider donut.

Every year, Skippy sponsored my peanut butter for my peanut butter and jelly donut every year, Brooklyn gin gave me gin. So that I would have the Brooklyn gin donut on my menu every day. So it just built on itself and I realized this is the way that I can stay relevant and people will continually coming back because it's not the same.

We have the classic menu that's on there all the time, but then there's always something new. So that was the strategy. There's always, you could come every week and you would kick, you could get a different donut. And

[00:18:37] Will Schreiber: yeah,

[00:18:37] Leslie Polizzotto: that was the strategy and it worked.

[00:18:40] Will Schreiber: Did you ever seek out these partnerships or like pretty much everyone approached you?

[00:18:44] Leslie Polizzotto: Everyone approached us. It was insane.

[00:18:46] Will Schreiber: Yeah.

What was then the process for if you didn't have a partnership lined up, like how much pressure was there and how did you manage like inventing something new for that week?

[00:18:55] Leslie Polizzotto: Before the pandemic, we weren't so worried about that because we might talk about this [00:19:00] later.

But before the pandemic, I had two locations and lots of employees, and it was a bigger monster to control. So it was usually just when we had collaborations that we would do something new. But when the pandemic hit, I switched it over to every single weekend. We would have two, sometimes three, Donuts available for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday only.

And they go away forever or an entire year. And it brought people in really did. And,

[00:19:27] Will Schreiber: Were most of your customers just like individuals in the neighborhood or like what was your customer base?

[00:19:33] Leslie Polizzotto: It was everybody. It was locals. It was people from all over the world. Every day I would have somebody in my shop from England, Italy, Japan, China, Scotland.

Australia, Brazil, and it would be because they found out about us because some influencer and this is like more recent and influencer or we come in and do a review or come in and [00:20:00] film in the shop and taste the doughnuts. And so they all person, and that's when they were like, okay, when we go to New York, we have to go to this donut place because that's what this influencer said.

TikTok and all of that it laid, most recently influencers were huge in bringing people globally to my business for sure. Did you think about,

[00:20:21] Will Schreiber: yeah, it's, and it's funny you say that I was in Unregular the other day because it's right by Union Square and there was a donut tour starting there.

[00:20:30] Leslie Polizzotto: Yeah, I think you mentioned. Yeah, we were on tour. Yeah.

[00:20:33] Will Schreiber: Yeah. What were other sales channels? Did you pursue wholesale or like office deliveries or stuff? Like, how else did you sell your donuts or was it pretty much all kind of consumer and then maybe some tours coming in?

[00:20:45] Leslie Polizzotto: We did, like I mentioned, we did, we were on the tours.

We would have about 15 tours come through a week. But, Originally, we were just, retail storefront. Then we tried wholesale. It was not worth it. Everybody wants the donut for [00:21:00] half the price at 6 AM delivered for free. And it's wait, I'll just sell them where I am for the full price and not deliver them and make more money.

So that's so slippery slope. If you go wholesale, when it comes to donuts, at least. It's very hard. You have to have a machine pumping them out. The Donut Project is handcrafted. It's hand rolled. It's hand cut. Everything is done by hand. We don't have a sheeter where everything's, mechanized. So we weren't set up to make wholesale work.

We're not Krispy Kreme. So we couldn't do that. But we started obviously with delivery apps like DoorDash and delivery systems, because we didn't have money to pay, have an employee to go deliver products. We, the delivery apps were becoming more and more popular. And so we would sometimes have 3 different, Uber Eats or Postmates or Grubhub or DoorDash, delivering.

And then, we had our pre ordering system which you guys [00:22:00] helped which we'll talk about later. But then I also had corporate clients, so I would have clients who would order hundreds of donuts once a month, or, I, at the end, I was delivering 150 donuts every week, every Friday.

To a tech company. Yeah, so I had corporate clients. I, we did,

[00:22:16] Will Schreiber: do you have any law firms? Is this like law

[00:22:19] Leslie Polizzotto: firms? Many times. Yeah. Law firms, real estate, any office environment, again, taking back to the origin brings in donuts to. Make its employees happy and literally this tech company I would deliver every week and people I would have people come into my shop and say I work for that company and I don't ever go into the office except Fridays because I know your donuts are coming in.

[00:22:43] Will Schreiber: Yeah, it's a good tactic by them. Yeah, it worked. So give us like the arc of your business because I think you've mentioned it of, starting and in 2014, 2015, and then opening a second location and the COVID hits like what was your [00:23:00] journey in terms of Donut Project and its major phases?

[00:23:03] Leslie Polizzotto: Yeah, early success. But still. Newbies at running a business. I had a partner who was, in charge of operations and I was in charge of everything else. And, when the pandemic hit, I had 2 locations and I had 25 employees and we were open every day and 9 hours a day. We were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and made absolutely no money.

No money, not a penny at all. I was miserable. I was so stressed out. I was like, this has to work. I can't fail at this. I was very stressed out. Pandemic happens bad for the world. Good for the Donut Project. Like I said, all right, here's what we're going to do. I closed the second location.

Unfortunately I had to lay off a lot of employees and me and my old business partner and one, one, our head pastry chef. Just kept the one location, the original location open. We were open five days a week, five hours a day. [00:24:00] So 25 hours, that was it. And we started doing the, I still had people wanting to do collaborations.

And I was like, we have to have something special every weekend because people would drive from Boston, from way out Montauk, Long Island, from Vermont, from Jersey to come in during the pandemic. And walk in and pick up their bag of donuts. And I, to this day, when we closed, I had people come in and say, you saved us in the pandemic because it was so exciting every weekend to come get the new donuts.

And it was like a little outdoor activity. We got in the car, we drove to you. And so the pandemic just, we became so popular because every weekend. We had something new and fun. It would either be collaboration or something we came up with. That was either like a pop culture reference or a nostalgic dessert.

We went through a cinnamon roll phase where we did all these kinds of cinnamon roll donuts. Like we did the tiger King donut and [00:25:00] how tiger King was really popular in Netflix. And so we created a tiger. It blew people's minds. It, they were so excited to get these donuts. And I was happy.

I loved it. I was in the business. So I was Pulling shots. I was making doughnuts. I was glazing doughnuts. I was selling doughnuts. I was, we were just three people running like chickens with their heads cut off and then my business partner left and then it was just me and my head pastry chef. And so I brought back on a couple more pastry chefs and.

That's pretty much how I kept it. I never increased my hours, only 25 hours a week, and it would be me and three pastry chefs, and we would do crazy collaborations and weekend specials every weekend, and we killed it. I paid off all my debt and became profitable by being less. Less is more. I literally was open half the amount of time.

And was became better at it

[00:25:54] Will Schreiber: and have the storefront. I think right. You closed the 2nd location. [00:26:00] Yeah,

[00:26:00] Leslie Polizzotto: the 2nd location was closed. So it was just the original location in the West village. It's tiny little 724 square foot and with keeping it tight and small and creative and just making it almost like an art project.

Just turned around and became successful, not just from the outside looking in, 'cause everybody thought, oh, you're so successful. But before the pandemic, we, I didn't make any money. I like not a penny and I, we owed hundreds of thousands of dollars. I owed my food purveyor $30,000 when the pandemic hit.

30, 000 every day. I woke up before the pandemic and I had two locations and 25 employees open 10 hours a day or whatever. I owed 100, 000 before I made one penny.

That's a lot. That's a lot of pressure.

[00:26:52] Will Schreiber: Yeah, it absolutely

[00:26:54] Leslie Polizzotto: made it smaller and more manageable. And I could, actually do it changed [00:27:00] everything and made it better and I loved it and I was super happy and made it successful and paid off the debt and made money.

Like actually made money.

[00:27:10] Will Schreiber: So it wasn't just Bottle that made you super happy.

[00:27:14] Leslie Polizzotto: No but Bottle...

[00:27:15] Will Schreiber: Just kidding. Correlated with the time. I'm curious, like your thought process of that Okay, the pandemic hits in theory. It's an ocean moment. Did you view it that there was this kind of narrative opportunity to take advantage of it or just like things broke and you said I have to change something like, what was your thought process in this transition time?

[00:27:37] Leslie Polizzotto: I think it was a selfish one. I think it was, I am not going to just close it with owing all of this money and in this bad of a shape of a business, Successful visually and like what we were doing, but it wasn't making money and it was, in debt. I was not going to quit at that point. [00:28:00] And so I like we're scaling back and we're just going to make donuts and see what happens.

And, I started to make money and cause my expenses were so much less. And there was, you become more efficient and you're like streamlining processes and making little few changes and you got less people doing things you have, you better have good people, when you have all these people, a lot of times it's inefficient and people tend to not work very hard, but when it's you and a couple of people and you're really committed and you pay them well and you treat them well.

And they're committed to the brand, then you can achieve great things. And that's what it was. I only hired professional pastry chefs who went to school. This is their career. This is what they want to do. Not, Oh, here's a Craigslist ad. And you get people coming in who think, they just need a job, being very targeted on who I wanted on my team and paying them well.

And giving them up every day. I would be like, Oh, here's our sales today. And like blown, [00:29:00] just blowing our minds. We would make. Like 5, 000 in five hours

in sales.

And it's that's pretty good in New York City. And you do that, keep doing that kind of sales and you get out of debt and you start making money, it was,

[00:29:16] Will Schreiber: so it's, I feel like your goal shifted, right?

Like your goal was, I don't know what it was before. Maybe you have insider reflection of what was your goal pre pandemic? And then your goal changed to be about you more of like, why am I doing this? Like the business should support me and maybe not the other way around.

[00:29:37] Leslie Polizzotto: The business before the pandemic, I was just, I was treading water to try to stay like my keep up not from drowning, but mental health wise and physical wise, I was drowning.

I was very unhealthy, drank a lot and. Just I don't know. I just when I look back on how I was at that time, I was very [00:30:00] unhealthy, kind of state. But that's just, I'm just I'm never gonna quit. And I said, Oh, it can be up to a detriment, at times when sometimes you should.

But at this point in the pandemic, I was just not gonna walk away owing all this money, and it just wasn't gonna happen. So, slowly but surely, I found, Hey, if we Less is more, let's do less is more. And it turned everything around. And I became very happy with, working in the business.

But after, three years, I was like, ah, this is great, but am I going to do this the rest of my life? No, probably not. The lease was going to come up and I'm like, am I really going to sign him on their lease for this? It's been a great run, but. I don't want to do it forever, I'm tied to this store in Manhattan, I could be working, or, a lot of people can work from anywhere or, I don't know, I just started to reconsider what do I want my life to be and it's not going down to there and, Every day I'm serving coffee and donuts.

Now people are like you can hire somebody to do [00:31:00] that. Sure. But then it changes the vibe. It changes people liked coming in and talking with me and meeting, and this is the owner, any small business that the owner's involved in, they're successful small businesses where the owner is not involved and they hire a bunch of people think it's going to do everything for them.

They will not be successful. It's just, that's what I've learned. And so I stayed in it. To make, keep it successful. But then I was like, I'm ready to do other things. I'm going to move on to other interests. And so that's the position, nothing negative about my brand. I love it. And I'm actually, I was selfish about it because I had people, want to buy it, but I was like, no, I'm just going to.

Yeah,

[00:31:43] Will Schreiber: What helped you redo this framework and kind of self evaluate of what your goals in life were? Because I think so many entrepreneurs, Andy and I included find ourselves at moments like this in a business. What have you found helpful to navigate these moments of [00:32:00] uncertainty of fear of what should I do with my business and my life?

[00:32:05] Leslie Polizzotto: Yeah. I just took a journey, I'm older and, it's a joke. My husband's Oh, you hit a midlife crisis. And I'm like no, men may hit midlife crisis and they, buy a sports car and make bad decisions. Women we kind of pivot or had to hit a reset and we, Shake off on one unwanted things and grow.

That's my experience. I just went through a lot of self therapy, so to speak. And figured out a lot of things that, causing me to behave certain ways and have an unhealthy lifestyle. And I just really started to focus on my physical health and my mental health. And, my relationships with family and just did this, 40 and self therapy thing.

And it really started to improve my life. I started learning about how the brain works and psychology, and I started studying philosophy and just come from that, before the Donut [00:33:00] Project, where it was like putting on a show and talking to people and performing all day, it was, I was research, doing research and writing and very, Intellectual kind of, work.

And so I started to dive back into, reading and writing and stuff like that and realize that, I love my business, but it's time for me to, move on to other things. I want to help other people. Like I'm just in the position where I can do what I want. And even though my business name made money, it wasn't like I was going to buy a Ferrari or, buy a mansion with that money, it was sustainable.

Okay. In New York City, because I'm, I have a spouse who also has an income. If I was by myself, and I was living off of that, then I, I probably wouldn't have closed it because I would definitely needed it to survive. But I was in a position where I didn't need it to survive. And so I choose to do.

fun. Thanks.

[00:33:52] Will Schreiber: Yeah, if you could start over, what do you think you got right what would you do again?

Definitely the

[00:33:59] Leslie Polizzotto: Marketing [00:34:00] of collaborations and having weekend specials, any foo Food people all the time, that aren't in the donut biz, but just any food and just be creative. And, can't stay stagnant. You can't just have the same menu. Think about your, you go out to dinner and to a restaurant you frequent a lot.

If they never ever change their menu, don't you start going somewhere else once in a while, because they don't, You can't have the same thing all the time. And so our weekend specials were creative and, we would do lemon meringue pie doughnuts or, tres leche cake doughnut, just bringing nostalgic feelings of happiness and to our customers so that they would want to come in and get it.

Definitely the strategy of collaborations and weekend specials and a unique take on doughnuts, pushing the envelope on what a doughnut can be is what I would do over for sure.

[00:34:56] Will Schreiber: All right, what's the opposite? What would you not do again? What [00:35:00] I would think that I

[00:35:02] Leslie Polizzotto: have to have locations everywhere.

I would never open that 2nd location. New York City seems if you don't live here and you think it's this huge place, it's not. It's very small. You can walk from 1 side of the island to the net, to the other in no time. It's you don't need to have, For locations and I've seen that with a lot of coffee businesses here that have come and had five, 10 locations within a year and they all fail.

It's small enough that people will come to you. So I, I would not open a 2nd location. And I think that's more

[00:35:36] Will Schreiber: true than ever in New York. I don't know about other places, but with Google Maps and telling you how to get there and Uber, and then it's like people on the subway

[00:35:45] Leslie Polizzotto: and be, you can be uptown and jump on the subway and be in the West Village and exactly.

Exactly.

It's not in L. A. Where you have to get in a car and drive an hour and a half anywhere you want to go. So you're not going to go to the donut shop. That's an hour and a half away. Of course not. But in New York, [00:36:00] it makes sense. And so definitely wouldn't have a 2nd location. And I definitely wouldn't have hired so many people to, pay for it.

My business partner thought you were supposed to hire people to do everything. And I'm like in a sense, but there are certain things you have to keep a handle on. You have to know what's going on in the business or other or things just don't go. They just don't, especially in a fickle.

Business like donuts. Every day we open, we had nothing to sell. We had to make it. So you have to make sure somebody shows up in the morning to make the donuts. And when I had the second location, I had to have a guy drive a man through the middle of city with donuts in it because the second location was just didn't have a kitchen.

It was just a retail. These are all people you're depending on, and they let you down for sure. And that was what was so hard and so stressful and maybe so unhappy. So keeping it small. I would not try to make it a big deal. And, just the unique uniqueness will always rule. And so I'm happy we did that.

Yeah,

Never anything mediocre or easy to do. You [00:37:00] think it's easy to do, you can hire people to do that. And that's not the case.

[00:37:03] Will Schreiber: Yeah. What do you like what's something that. Was just always a challenge for you in operating the business specifically like what was like surprisingly challenging

[00:37:14] Leslie Polizzotto: the labor is the main thing and before the pandemic it was a nightmare like people stealing from you not showing up calling out.

And then after the pandemic, when I switched the pool of people that I was targeting to work for my brand, it was professional pastry chefs or the went to culinary school people who had worked in restaurants like this was their chosen career. Pay them, you pay them have to pay them more money, obviously, because.

Otherwise they're not going to work there. So it was just elevating the labor was the hardest challenge and how I fix counteracted that was changing the pool of people I was looking for and increasing the amount of money I paid them.

[00:37:57] Will Schreiber: Yeah. So what are you doing now? [00:38:00] So context everyone I guess if you want to walk through your last month on Bottle was crazy.

And at one point Leslie caught us at like midnight or texted. I can't remember God, we got to shut it off. We got to shut it off. I don't know how to shut it off. Getting so many orders. Okay.

[00:38:13] Leslie Polizzotto: So to talk about Bottle, like before, so we were so popular. And I, after the pandemic. We would take pre orders and the pre ordering system I had before didn't print out anything for me to tell me what the orders were.

It was, I had to manually calculate how many of this flavor we needed, how many of this flavor, like every night I would spend an hour counting and tabulating results to, to know what we needed to do the next day. And I'm talking 50 pre orders, like we would cut it off at 50 because. We couldn't handle more than that because we still had to have donuts for people walking in the door and we still had to have donuts for people on Uber Eats or Grubhub.

It [00:39:00] was a lot of planning that went into what we were going to do the next day because you don't want to make too many. You don't want to make too little because both are bad. But Bottle came and changed my life and the pre ordering system. Produced reports that told me how many of each donut I needed.

So literally added an hour to an hour and a half of my evening that gave back to me because of the Bottle. And that's how, that's awesome.

[00:39:28] Will Schreiber: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. I love to hear it.

[00:39:30] Leslie Polizzotto: But at the end we would have to like, I'm like, I have to turn it off because we can't take any more. Like 50 was the, like the limit, every day we have, we'd have 50 pre orders and that would mean, that's not 50 donuts.

That's. Sometimes 400 doughnuts that have been pre

ordered,

and that's not people coming in to buy them, because people are coming in to buy them too. Pre ordering was great for us, and why Bottle was so important because of our model of collaborations and weekend specials, [00:40:00] and limited runs, People wanted to preorder them because they wanted to secure them and they wanted to make sure they got their weekend special donut.

So that's how you became so important because of my business model. We wanted to encourage people to preorder because it helped us learn, okay, we already have 400 sold. So we can expect to at least do double that because we're going to have the walk ins and the delivery apps. So it was a, it was helpful for us as a tool to know how much to make.

Through your system.

[00:40:33] Will Schreiber: Yeah, I obviously love to hear that. I'm glad that we were as helpful as we were apart from the the shut it off bugs there at the end. But I was out of town your last weekend and I was just scrolling Instagram. I think I told you this and I remember seeing videos of people posting and people lined up around the block, wait, trying to get in.

And I knew because of the context of shut it off. Like we were too many orders. I was like, wow, you guys.

[00:40:56] Leslie Polizzotto: The Lucy, like this show, Lucy, when they're working the conveyor [00:41:00] belt with the chocolates and they're trying to shut it off, like it was that kind of thing where people were just ordering and it would, I would blink and there would be 10 more orders would come in and it was just like scary because we can only execute so much in the timeframe, and it was shaky there at the end, but also.

With Bottle every week, I would have to remove a couple of things off the menu and I would have to add a couple of things to the menu. With your system, it wasn't like I set it up and it was, oh, we're good to go for forever. Updating and changing it, which was very easy to do. And because we had a constantly changing menu, which was key to our stress.

So that was one that it worked so well.

[00:41:41] Will Schreiber: That's awesome. I'm glad it was. But and what I'm really driving for here is tell us about what you're up to now. So like you closed in February. Yeah. What are your plans from here?

[00:41:51] Leslie Polizzotto: I'm in the process of working with my head pastry chef.

We are writing a cookbook of our, for the brand. I've always kept the recipes very [00:42:00] close to the chest. I get asked every day on Instagram DMs, please. Can we buy your recipes? Can we. How do you make this? Blah, blah, blah. And I've always kept it very secretive because it's part of our intellectual property, which we do trademark through licensing locations.

I have three locations in Saudi Arabia but, so I never gave anything away, but now we are in the process of converting all the recipes from mass production to home use. So you can make, a dozen doughnuts versus, 400. And so we're in the process of doing that. And I'm reliving, everything because I am going to include in the cookbook a lot of our weekend specials and our collaborations, just, images of them and blurbs of what they were.

So I'm reliving the brand as we speak by going through all of the images. I have over 40, 000 images on my phone of donuts. We have done thousands of different options and it's amazing. And [00:43:00] so that's what I'm working on right now is as a cookbook to I'm self publishing it. I hope to have it out by for Christmas.

So that can be given as Christmas presents. It is for our customers. It is for other donut shops. It is for a lot of global customers as well. Everyone's interested in seeing our recipes. So that's what I'm working on. And then besides that, I'm traveling. I'm actually traveling a lot. I've been to visiting family that I haven't seen in many moons because I was so tied to the shop going to California a lot to visit family there because I used to live there.

My husband's family's from there. And we're going to England on Friday spending a couple weeks there. We love England. I have a lot of food connections there with other donut brands and ice cream brands that I go visit and friends and stuff. So just traveling, writing and. Falling in love with living.

I love that quote, and it's Martha Stewart said it, and I'm [00:44:00] trying to strive to model that is to fall in love with living. And so every day, making the best of whatever is coming.

[00:44:08] Will Schreiber: I love that. What advice would you have for entrepreneurs, either operating their own business or thinking about starting.

[00:44:14] Leslie Polizzotto: If well a once you do it, you'll never go back to working for anybody else. because it is very rewarding and wonderful. But it is very hard and it is a 24 7 situation. It is not, it's not for everybody. If you like going to work and clocking in and then leaving and not thinking about work anymore until you have to go back, it's not for you because it will Infiltrate every day of your life, even when you're on vacation, trying to be on vacation, you will still be dealing with your business.

With that said, you've got to have the right character traits. You've got to be very motivated and driven and no quit. Never quit attitude. Do what it takes. That kind of thing. You also need to love what it's about. If I was selling, I don't know, cell phones, if I had a cell [00:45:00] phone store, I would probably not be very happy with it.

I don't really care about cell phones, but I love to. My, I love doughnuts and they were fun and I got to be creative with it. And it touched on my passions of art. I had studied art in undergrad and food. I was a huge foodie. So I got into it in the first place. So it touched and I love fashion and I like creative things.

So it touched on all of those and it allowed me to go from reading and writing in a room by myself in my office for 10 hours a day, to. To creating works of art and interacting with people and being on TV shows and videos and filming and creating content. And it was a creative outlet for me. So you need to make sure you like what the business is.

You should also partner with people who maybe have skills that you don't because. I'm telling you right now, it is very hard to start a business. And sometimes when you have a partner that maybe has some skills that you don't have, I was very structured, came from legal profession. My, [00:46:00] my old business partner was from the food world.

So he brought that knowledge. So it, if I hadn't done it, if we were both like me, it would have failed if we were both like him, it would have failed. So sometimes you have to partner with people who are a little different than you. But you also have to make sure that they have the same work ethic you have, because otherwise you're going to take on more than what you should because the other person is not carrying their weight.

So, love it, work with somebody who has something you don't have, and make sure they're the right person. And you also have to have support from your family, because I went from a six figure job to not taking a salary for over a year. So it's not, sometimes, It's pretty rough. So you have to make sure you have support, not necessarily financial support, which helps, support, want you to do this and encouraging you to do this, because if your partner is pissed that you gave up a job to struggle and literally devote all your time to something, it's not going to work.

So support from your, whoever, and that you [00:47:00] surround yourself with is, it's very crucial.

[00:47:02] Will Schreiber: I think all excellent advice. Do you have any is there like a funny story in your mind that sticks out of running a shop of a funny celebrity coming in or donut failure or something that maybe wasn't funny at the time?

Okay. I got

[00:47:17] Leslie Polizzotto: a lot of them. But like we were with Jim Gaffigan. We were on a show with Jim Gaffigan. Like I've done all kinds of crazy stuff, but one of the funniest things was my business partner and I. Went out and got plastered drunk and the next day we had a filming with Sean Evans from Hot Ones because we were creating a Hot Ones donut.

This is long time ago before he became what he is now. He had the show but wasn't as sick. It wasn't as big as it is now. We were doing a donut for National Chicken Wing Day with First Wheat Fe First, first Feast. I forget the name of the First We Feast.

[00:47:56] Will Schreiber: Yeah,

[00:47:56] Leslie Polizzotto: First We Feast. Yeah.

[00:47:57] Will Schreiber: Yeah.

[00:47:57] Leslie Polizzotto: So he was coming to film to [00:48:00] talk about the donut we created with them.

And I wasn't even supposed to be on camera, but my business partner was so hungover that he didn't come in and we. I had to do the video off the cuff with Sean Evans, and you can see it is out there on YouTube. It's there. And I did great. I'm telling you right now you would never know how sick hungover I was.

And this is another thing like I don't even hardly drink now it's like I've changed my whole life but that's how crazy it was like we would just go out and have fun and then, oh yeah we have this filming tomorrow and we actually have to act like we're human beings. But right. That's my funny story. Yeah, I'll have to

[00:48:41] Will Schreiber: look up the video.

Yeah.

[00:48:42] Leslie Polizzotto: Performing and you will not believe you'll see it and you'll be like, yeah, I don't look fun. I don't act it. I was Oscar for that because I was definitely, hanging on by a thread.

[00:48:55] Will Schreiber: Yeah, funny. Yeah. All thank you so much for your time. Is there any other [00:49:00] like closing thought or something you wished we had covered or had imparted here?

[00:49:06] Leslie Polizzotto: No, but we've covered everything, but I would say, if any of your people want to call or chat let me know. I'd love to give advice. That's 1 of my favorite things to do is to share what I know. If anyone has questions They can get my information from you. And I have, I

have a

calendarly phone call set up, system so that people can schedule a call if they have questions or want to know more or ask advice on their business.

I'm not that I know everything, but I, Pretty much learned a lot from my 10 year project.

[00:49:37] Will Schreiber: Awesome. Yeah, I encourage anyone who wants to get in touch, just, Will@bottle.com is my email. Email me and I'll put you guys in touch. And thanks so much for the time today. And congrats on what was an amazing journey and it's still going.

And just sad that your shop is gone, but

[00:49:54] Leslie Polizzotto: I miss the donuts for sure.

[00:49:56] Will Schreiber: I do too.

[00:49:57] Leslie Polizzotto: It's, it was a moment in time [00:50:00] and, just like studio 54 or whatever, something that's so special doesn't last forever. It usually doesn't. And if it does, it's changed. Something changes from something special to now it's everywhere in every city.

It's because it's changed and it's not changed for the better. It's changed for the worst. So when something's truly special, it stays small and it usually doesn't last forever.

[00:50:23] Will Schreiber: Yeah, I think I agree with that. All yeah, have an awesome rest of the day. Enjoy the trip to England and hope everyone has a wonderful Tuesday here.

Thanks for tuning in.

[00:50:32] Leslie Polizzotto: Thank you. All

[00:50:34] Will Schreiber: Bye.