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Dave Jackley
Peace, Love Little Donuts. Right here. I’m here with Ron Razete, Founder of Peace, Love and Little Donuts. And welcome to another edition of ExactlyAtHome North of Pittsburgh. So you’re in 15 states! That’s incredible.
Ron Razete
It’s surprising because you keep doing the same little thing and keep your head down and then wake up one day and you go, “Holy Mackerel, this is way bigger than I thought it was ever going to be.”
Dave Jackley
That’s phenomenal. You have a bunch of flavors, like every flavor in the rainbow. Let’s see I have the Almond Torte here. I’m gonna bite into it.
Ron Razete
Yeah, that donut is inspired by the Prantl’s, and an Oakmont Bakeries version of that, right, which is award winning, but it’s very, very local to Pittsburgh. If you took that donut to Nashville, no one would know what it was. I mean, they might like it. But they might not think burn almond donut right, which is where we’re headed, right. So we actually buy those burn almonds from the bakery. Oh, that’s so cool and we can get in their wheelhouse, right? So we try and create a little mini version of that, but it’s delicious. Our flavors, people say how you come up with all the flavors? Well, our original donut shop in the strip was 240 square feet. So if you can imagine the space we’re sitting in, is everything, including customers. So we’re waiting on customers in that space and making donuts in that space and refrigeration. And it had no windows. So if I locked you in that place, for 12 hours a day, you’d come up with some flavors to I mean, you would be thinking, I wonder if you could pour you know this on a doughnut or that and that’s how it happened. Really, I think our creativity was more born of literally being locked into a tiny space for long periods of time than it was necessarily pure creativity.
Dave Jackley
I know I like variety of choice, freedom of choice. The fact that you can end up with your own super mixed box and try something different each time you go back to it. Thatt’s awesome.
Ron Razete
Right? And the size of it leads to being able to do a couple different choices and not feeling like you took a dive off the diet bridge that’s ruined your life.
Dave Jackley
That’s super. Well, this is really great. I also like the vibe. You you went with? What would you call this “the 70’s thing?” Yes, I gotta tell you that that holds a lot of vibe with me, because that’s when I was coming of age.
Ron Razete
I too grew up in the 70’s. I was born in 60. And, and I think for the 70’s people, not only the people that grew up in the 70’s are the people who are enjoying really the genre, the the decade of the 70s even to this day, young people love 70’s music. It’s fascinating to me, yeah, that they know these artists, and they know the songs and I think wow, that’s because they listen to their parents music probably , and became quietly aware. But they do like it and, and they love the tie dye and the whole vibe of the of the 70s, which I think is fun. And it was easy for us to wrap a brand around that.
Dave Jackley
So have you had any really unusual requests? Have people ask you for something crazy?
Ron Razete
Wow, that’s a that’s a loaded question. We’ve done a lot of different kinds of catering. We we’ve catered all kinds of different events. We did a Bar Mitzvah once, where the first the first person they ordered like, literally 100 dozen donuts. And then when we quoted that we quoted the cost of it, they doubled the order to 200 dozen. And I thought wow, and then this is in Cleveland, Ohio, and now our stores sort of playing middleman between us. They call me they go “Well, we want your tie dye van there.” I said I drive that van every day. So it’s gonna be a little challenging. They went, “Yeah, how much?” I said, “Okay, X dollars”, and they went done. In retrospect, I should have asked for more.
Dave Jackley
That’s always the case.
Ron Razete
So my wife and I get to spend the weekend in Cleveland in a rental car. Well, my vehicle is parked at the venue where this permits but and the gentleman that was putting on the bar mitzvah actually flew the Harlem Globetrotters in for his son’s Bar Mitzvah. If you can imagine . . . I was probably the lightest version of that expensive weekend. I know what the Harlem Globetrotters wereand I know where we ended up.
Dave Jackley
Oh my gosh, that is so much fun. Do you do you have to travel around the 15 states now and check up on things?
Ron Razete
Yes, we do. My wife Marci and I do travel around we this year, we visited the Medford oregon store already. We visited both locations in Denver, and the one in Dallas. And while we were in Dallas, we went down to see Joanna and Chip Gaines, you know, in Waco?
Dave Jackley
Yeah, we believe me in the real estate business, there’s a lot of HGTV fans.
Ron Razete
I’ll tell you what, those guys can merchandise man, you walk in there, it is like being a Disney. They’re selling you something. Just unbelievable. So what we do, we visit all our stores.
Dave Jackley
Ron, I really appreciate you sharing the whole story behind this fantastic business. Tell me like as it grew from,you have fun making donuts to now having lots and lots of people involved has that really changed the game for you?
Ron Razete
You know, I think in some ways, of course it has. And in other ways, it’s exactly the same, you know, we, we literally go and train all of our store owners on site, in every location. So we do that ourselves. And our family provides that training. So we try and make sure we don’t miss something or lose something in the translation. But we’re, of course, very passionate about what we do. And therefore, we probably tell them more than they want to know. But we’re always trying to make sure that they understand why we do things the way we do. And that’s the difficulty in making sure that they catch what we believe is the most important piece of that. And that’s the challenge in any business, I think, is to translate a Founder or Owners passion about a product or a service to people who, let’s say, come to Pittsburgh for whatever reason with his love for the Steelers or hate of the Steelers. And they come here and they run into us either in the strip or at one of our locations. And then they come in through the back door and say hey, we want to open a store. And that happens wherever they’re from. And then we have to, you know, vet them of course and then find out if they really have what it takes emotionally and in the stamina to take on this project.
Dave Jackley
That’s so fantastic. Well, Ron, I really want to thank you for sharing the entire story and for taking the time for letting the people in the audience here know what goes on. And stay tuned again for another edition of ExactlyAtHome north of Pittsburgh.
