Demand from sugar-crazed New Yorkers for a small-time doughnut shop set up by a couple who lost their jobs in the pandemic has been so high it now has a waiting list of thousands of customers.
The Filipino-inspired Kora bakery was started out of a Woodside, Queens apartment last summer as a specialist online-only store of tasty treats.
But with orders flying in, chef Kimberly Camara and her partner, Kevin Borja, now have a five-person-strong team and industrial kitchen.
They have now been working through a 5,000-person waiting list which had swelled to as big as 10,000 at one point, and are looking to open a physical store.
One of their most striking creations is the purple-colored Ube doughnut, made from a light brioche dough with a Filipino flan filling and given its bright color from Okinawan yams.
It follows a similar craze among New Yorkers for cupcakes at the West Village's Magnolia Bakery, as well as demand for the 'cronut' (croissant-doughnut) creation that rose to fame in 2013.
'When we started Kora we had no intention of turning it into a full-blown business,' Camara told The Guardian.
'It was something that we thought would just be a seasonal project... We kind of just went with the flow.'
Initially reliant on family and friends to help prepare and deliver orders, the bakery has become a full-time operation.
Camara, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America, uploads videos of her creations and huge production line to Instagram where she has 40,000 followers.
Some of their signature creations include leche flan brioche doughnut or a halu-halo doughnut made with banana chips, sago, maraschino cherry, leche flan, pinipig and a ube glaze.
The unique Filipino-inspired recipes come from or are inspired by Camara's late grandmother Corazon's recipe book which she found after she had died.
Orders for the bakery are currently closed as they catch up with a backlog of 5,000 customer orders. There is a 10-doughnut limit per customer.
For Camara, the chance to make a living selling treats inspired by her grandmother has proved very fulfilling.
'Kora is the coming together of my entire life,' she told Eater. 'There is no way that my grandmother is looking down on us and isn’t so proud of all of the work that we’ve done.'
'Wherever Kora takes us, behind all of it is my connection with her and my connection with my heritage.'
Comments
Leave a Comment