Most Americans know what it looks like: the small, circular pastry with a signature hole through the middle. The donut remains one of the quintessential “American” foods, an iconic breakfast item stereotypically associated with lazy cops or animated TV dads.
But little do customers in Southern California know that many of the shops they visit are owned by Cambodian immigrants.
A strip mall stands at the intersection of 3rd St. and New Hampshire Ave. in Los Angeles’ Koreatown. Here, alongside a laundromat and a Hawaiian barbecue restaurant sits California Donuts.
The 24/7 shop is just a large glass window, with a fluorescent sign and holiday decorations plastered over the rows of colorful donuts, ranging from classic glazed to their iconic panda-decorated donuts.
With nearly 350,000 followers on Instagram, the shop has become an L.A. icon—a long way since its start in 1982. Most recently, in the midst of the wildfires impacting L.A., California Donuts ran a Donut Drive, with donations going towards bringing boxes of donuts to feed first responders, volunteers, and families.
The founders of the shop are Cambodian immigrants, who after being factory workers under the Khmer Rouge, decided to come to the U.S.
“My mom saw the potential in this little corner shop, and so they gathered all the money they could to purchase it and they just 100% went in and worked,” said current co-owner Danette Kuoch.
Before joining the business, however, Kuoch tried many things. She went to college, worked for a big company, even tried starting her own business, but she was not satisfied.
“I was just working all day long, and I just looked at my life and I said, ‘You know what? Why am I doing this for somebody else? Let me do this for my parents,” she said.
Kuoch grew up in the business, so it seemed natural that in 2003, she would take over the family store alongside her sister.
“My earliest memories were just summer vacations spent here,” she said. “I was filling up the sugar containers and counting pennies or folding boxes.”
Kuoch’s story is one of many second-generation Cambodian immigrants. In fact, roughly 80% of donut shops in southern California are Cambodian-owned. It may come as a surprise, knowing something so representative of Americana is to this immigrant community.
But there was a reason why donuts were the business to invest in. Some attribute the phenomenon to Ted Ngoy, the man dubbed “the Donut King” who found his way to managing his own donut shop before sponsoring other Cambodian immigrants and refugees in starting theirs.
Erin M. Curtis, the director of the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College wrote her dissertation on Cambodian donut shops. To her, it was the perfect combination of a simple business model and a welcoming culture.
“[Business and equipment] could be purchased relatively cheaply and set up quickly with fairly minimal labor,” said Curtis. “[It] has to do with why California was a place that was receptive to these kinds of businesses through fast food and car culture that was embedded here for a very, very long time.”
Part of the explosion could also be due in part to the lack of competition. Even major chains would not arrive until far later. Krispy Kreme opened its first California store in 1999, while Dunkin’ Donuts expanded into L.A. in the 1980s, left in 2002 and would not return until 2014. What was left was a vacuum that small businesses were able to fill.
Kuoch also believes that the popularity of donut shops among Cambodian immigrants comes down to the fact that it was a simple business for new immigrants to quickly get accustomed to.
“It was one of the easiest avenues for a Cambodian who [had] language barriers, all you needed to know was small, medium, large [coffee] or glazed sugar, chocolate,” she said. “Eventually my parents learned how to speak Spanish because the community speaks Spanish, so just slowly also having their American customers teach them how to speak English, that’s how they were able to gain knowledge here.”
Being a part of the local L.A. community is one of the reasons that has allowed the store to remain as popular as it is today. In fact, Juan Victoria, a California Donuts employee of three years, discussed how he was able to connect with his customers while working the cashier and packing donuts.
“Every day, some new people come in, they choose different donuts… some people that don’t know what they want, so you gotta help them out, or you have people that order a bunch, so you gotta pick up the pace with them,” he said. “I met friends, like they were customers, that I never would have thought to be able to talk to.”
According to Kuoch, they have even been able to take this relationship a step further.
“We had kids who grew up with us here,” she said. “They started working with us until they go into college. Some of them stick with us through college as well, so that’s how our community has given to us, and we have been able to give back.”
And California Donuts’ impact is real. Even beyond the local community, Kuoch feels that it has even extended beyond L.A.
“People know us more, not just in Koreatown, but like most of California and out of state and even out of country,” Kuoch said. “It’s like just having a bigger community and we just do what we can. We are involved with different organizations all over, but it’s just crazy to watch that we were just a small mom and pop local shop to now the world knowing who we are.”
But even on a global scale, they are still in the business of family, something carried over from their Cambodian roots.
“We have family members who would bake donuts, sell donuts, and then take a nap in the back of the donut shop,” Kuoch said. “Coming from Cambodia, we’re a third world country, there wasn’t eight-hour shifts or lunch breaks or anything, so when they came over, they just worked so hard to put food on the table for the family.”
Even her parents came back out of retirement to help out with the business once more. As for her kids, Kuoch wants them to find their own path, but the shop is always open for them to return.
“I don’t ever want to put any pressure on them, I want them to explore, between my sister and I, we’re all different people,” she said. “I know that this may not be their forte, but it’s there if they want to come over and take over.”
Of the over 1,500 Cambodian-owned donut shops in Southern California, L.A.’s California Donuts stands as one of the highlights. For generations, Kuoch’s family has been serving smoky coffee and sugary breakfast, and they don’t seem to be slowing down.
