Walk-up doughnuts are almost back: Here’s when Reigning Doughnuts will reopen in NoDa
Sometimes the smallest things make the biggest impact. This can be a good thing, like when you pay it forward or give someone a compliment.
This can also be a bad thing — like when the little motor that drops the Reigning Doughnuts dough into the fryer goes kaput, and the supply chain shortage meant NoDa’s little walk-up window was dark for more than 2 weeks.
“Usually when this happened in the past (where a single component breaks on the machine) we can get the part within the day,” co-owner Jeff Tonidandel told CharlotteFive earlier this month. “Now with supply chain delays as they are, getting these parts is taking days or even weeks.”
It turned out that it would take not one, but three different parts to fix the doughnut machine.
Good news to report, though: “Today we were able to get the machine back up and running, so we will be back to regular hours beginning tomorrow — just in time for our daily flavor, Apple Pie,” co-owner Jamie Brown told CharlotteFive on Monday, August 30.
During the closure, Brown and Tonidandel continued to pay employees based on their average work weeks so that the staff’s bank accounts didn’t suffer while the shop was closed.
And RIP to the old machine: “Our machine is several years old now and it gets a lot of use, so we’ve definitely considered purchasing a whole second machine,” Tonidandel said.
One problem with the tiny piece of real estate, though: “We just only have 80 square feet in the space and not much other available storage.”
Reigning Doughnuts
Location: 3120 N Davidson St STE 100, Charlotte, NC 28205
Neighborhood: NoDa
Instagram: @reigningdoughnuts
This story was originally published August 20, 2021 at 11:03 AM.
