- Hi, my name is Homero Perez and this is my Donuts 4U piece that I produced for Austin PBS.

(soft music) - [BJ] Donut 4U is a community staple.

It's been here for 15 years and people stop here from the neighborhood on their way to work, just grabbing kolaches, coffee, sandwiches and donuts least once a week.

(gentle music) - [Staff] Morning.

- [BJ] It's pretty huge.

The fact that we can keep it going and that it's not gonna like just go out of business like all the other places, a lot of the other places around have.

And the fact that we can keep these good donuts and these good kolaches in the community and it's a community center.

People stay here, they hang out here for hours out of the day and they go here before church and I really love that we can keep it going and I can be a part of it.

We knew the previous owner for about the last 10 years, but I did not realize that she owned this shop actually, which is kind of ironic or funny or whatever you wanna say.

But I would stop here every time I was in the side of town.

I live in Lago Vista, so I would stop here whenever I was in like North Austin Pflugerville area and just grab donuts, grab some kolatches and take 'em from where I was going and eat.

And so when the opportunity arose and we thought about if we wanted to do it, we reached out to the previous owner, Tina, and she was like, "Yeah, we'll sell you the place."

Honestly, I think the best donuts in town, so that's why.

Making a donut is essentially you have to make the dough, which is use flour and water mostly and some yeast and you ball it up and then flatten it out with a roller and then you just cut it with a cutter.

We hand cut all our donuts, we hand make all our food.

(ambient music) (ambient music continues) Yeah, don't skim.

Really just use the top quality ingredients.

Always use all of it.

A lot of donut shops will cut their flour with like kind of bench flour and things like that and we don't skip on anything.

It costs a little bit more, but in the end it's a much better product and people keep coming back for it.

(ambient music) Really happy people for the most part.

Really good people.

They're people on the way to work.

They're people with their kids they're just happy to have some place to eat and some place to grab some coffee before they go into their job.

Rundbridge community, come have our donuts, come have our kolaches.

We love to see all out here.

We just love the community.

It's just so tight knit community and there's not another community like it in Austin.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - I am Alex, I am the current owner of Donut 4U of the 620 location.

Rundberg opened around September of 2010.

At the time there wasn't that many food options.

If you've been on Rundberg, you know there's three gas stations across the street from each other.

There was recycle center and then Ken's Tacos.

We took over Ken's old unit.

Other than that, you'd have to go pretty far to get any food that's actually made, that's not like pre-prepared.

My mother wanted to open up one.

It's very typical in the Cambodian community for Cambodian people, especially Cambodian immigrants, to want to open up a donut shop.

It doesn't require English.

You don't need to speak English to run a donut shop.

You can basically do it without speaking English.

If you have your kids to help you or someone that can help you, it's very stereotypical for them.

It's you know, physical work, it's easy.

It's not super hard, just like any other business, any other work, there's aspects that's not that fun.

But, you know, it's easy.

It's not super difficult and you know it's food.

You know, it looks cool and then it's not hard.

- [Homero] And what's your favorite thing about running a donut shop?

- It's the customers, the people we see, especially on Rundberg and Moreso.

We've been here six years, we've been on run for 15 years.

And the best part's the customers, all the people that come in.

We've seen people come in from when they're little kids to now they're adults and they have their own kids.

We've seen the community change between the community grow.

It truly is the best part of running any business.

Other people will say the same thing.

It's the people.

And that's what we miss the most here too.

We miss the people over there.

We still see those people here, surprisingly.

They come here when they're in this part of town to come see us.

So it's always gonna be the people.

We miss them a lot too.

- [Homero] What is your favorite thing about the customers?

- We can relate.

You know, she came from Cambodia.

My mother immigrated here and they didn't speak a lot of English.

A lot of the Hispanic kids in that community, that part of town, same thing.

Their parents came here, they don't speak a lot of English.

Their parents rely on their kids to help them, help translate, help figure things out.

I can relate to the kids that come in, their mom doesn't know how to speak English and they go, "Mijo just order something."

Like, I get it, I've been in that position.

So I relate to the kids and we didn't grow up very well off.

So I understand the struggle of having, oh you know, your mom says, "We only have 10 bucks, you have to feed you, your sister, me and dad.

Order for us."

You know, so I get it.

So it's very relatable.

The most difficult thing is the unpredictability of it.

Some days we'll come in and we've been broken into, we'll come in, our windows are smashed.

We come in and sometimes somebody got shot in the parking lot so the whole parking lot's closed.

So the unpredictability is the hardest part.

Like I said, the best part is the community.

Like I see the same people in and out, we talk.

I even hang out with them like when I'm done with the store, if I see like I'm down the street at Lamahekana getting tacos, I see the customer, I'm like, "Yeah, did you eat yet?"

It's like, let's go, come, let's eat and I'll buy some tacos or get a torte.

Like we hang out.

Like, you know, I'm part of the community too, I'm there.

I'm not just there working, I bounce.

I'm there, I'm eating with them, we're hanging out.

We'll go play basketball at the park or we're hanging out at the park.

It's like, you know.

- [Homero] What positive impact has your business had on the Rundberg community?

- That I'm not sure about that.

That I think the community would answer better, but I hope that we were able to give like an affordable food option.

Like we try to have our prices as low as we can 'cause like I said earlier, like it's when the kids come in, sometimes their parents don't wanna get out the car, they're tired, they give the kids five, 10 bucks.

"Mijo, go in there, grab food enough for you and your sister to go to school."

So we try to keep our prices low.

At least they could walk in and get something freshly made that day that's still pretty hot and they can feed them, their siblings, their parents, all for five, 10 bucks at the time.

I also would like to think that the positive impact we had was we looked out for each other.

When you're a small community and you guys, we all don't have much because we all know we're all struggling.

Everyone there's struggling, no one's there is there because they're not struggling and someone takes something from you or breaks a thing you need to get to work.

It makes a big difference.

So when the community gets robbed or gets hurt, we talk and we look out for each other and we're like, "Oh, what does he look like?

If we see them, we're gonna call the cops."

We got each other's back 'cause we can relate.

They know we're real and we know, you know, we see each other all the time.

We're not gonna let someone get one over on someone else in the community.

You know, when someone tries to come and take advantage and try to take something from one of us, we're not gonna let that happen.

- [Homero] Would you consider the community as a family in a way?

- Yeah, I still, whenever I go there, even now, when I hop in there real quick, if someone sees me, they flag me down.

We talk, we say hi.

I've seen people from when they're like small from like five, six years old now.

We've been there 15 years, they're 20.

Some people even longer than that and they have kids now.

They've come in with their kids and we say hi.

You know, I would like to think that, you know, hopefully that never goes away for us.

You know, granted we're not there anymore, but you know, we still say hi.

Me and my mom would like to say thank you to everybody.

We miss you guys a lot.

I'm sorry we didn't get to say bye.

Hopefully you guys are all doing okay.

We wish you guys all the best.

Hang in there and don't be afraid to say hi.

If you ever see me or her, don't be afraid to say hi.

We love seeing you guys.

We miss you guys.

You know, we hope you guys are all doing well.

I know some of you are, we've seen each other and I've seen a lot of you guys grow up.

So hopefully we see each other out in the wild.

So thank you guys.

We miss you guys, truly, bye.

(gentle music)