- We are at Beyond Amazing Donuts in the Mumford area of Charlotte, North Carolina.

I always knew I wanted to pursue something in terms of like opening my own space.

At first, I thought it was gonna be biscuits or chocolate.

I even thought about empanadas.

Then I eventually was introduced to donuts.

And I was like, I can do this.

For starters, the process of our dough is a 24-hour process.

So if we need dough for Wednesday, it's starting on Monday.

And everything is fried and rolled out the morning of.

The donuts that don't sell, they don't roll over to the next day.

One way of ensuring freshness is that everything is literally made the morning of.

Our donut flavors are inspired by my family, friends, and pretty much my pastry journey.

Our most popular is the brown butter with salt and caramel.

It is one of the six staple flavors.

It's also the flavor that I made for my grandma because when we were little, she would eat slices of white bread with room temp butter and molasses, and it became one of my favorite snacks.

So I was just like, how can I take that experience and that memory and turn it into a donut flavor that is approachable and still offer people something a little different?

The Black Garlic Everything is our most intimidating flavor.

It is also something that I made or thought of.

What I like about it most is that it is an umami experience, but it also registers like my Southern upbringing, which is why I was excited to throw in the dry collards.

- I come to Beyond Amazing Donuts because they are amazing donuts, genuinely.

They are light and perfect, and they help me get my morning started.

- We implement seasonal items, or the goal is to use seasonal items also to interact with local farmers or local purveyors with goods that they have that we could use in our products as well.

So I'll take the list from Fresh List, that's the name of the company that I partner with.

I take their list, I see what they have available, and I kind of just sit down and I look at current trends within the pastry world, talk to all of my chef friends.

Like, "Hey guys, I have this idea.

How do you think I could turn that into a donut flavor?"

But I am constantly thinking about donut flavors.

- I used to come once a week.

I've had to cut back to be healthier, but I try to come at least on like the biweekly level.

My favorite donut is probably the Maple Old Fashioned.

Just really high quality, not too many bells and whistle to it.

Super, super simple.

And if you can make something super simple taste extraordinarily good, I think that shows a intense skill level.

- My goal is to just take people kind of on a journey with me and with the shop in terms of opening up their palette to different flavors.

What I like most about the Beyond Amazing part is that this entire journey is just like more than donuts to me.

It goes beyond just this shop or offering up what we do offer.

Everything makes sense, and it just goes beyond the purchase of a donut.