Today we’d like to introduce you to Staci Meyer.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My family has always had a love for baking and hospitality. In 2018, when we were all burned out with our healthcare jobs and looking for a change, my mom, two sisters and myself decided to take a leap and buy a food truck. The next year we opened serving homemade doughnuts and soft pretzels. In 2020, when we found a building for sale that we loved, we chose to change direction. We opened our Creamery, serving homemade ice cream and soft pretzels from our brick and mortar. We were overwhelmed by the wonderful response from guests and knew we needed to focus on maintaining our high level of quality so we made the decision to pause the doughnuts on the food truck shortly after the Creamery opened. We get weekly, sometimes daily, messages from guests asking where they can find our doughnuts. We have been searching for 2 years for the perfect building to bring them back and we finally found it! We fell in love with our Doughnutry location in South Knoxville and have been so thankful to have the opportunity to bring our doughnuts permanently to that area.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Owning a small business is never a smooth road. We chose to purchase our Creamery building in 2020, right when the world shut down. Things like getting a loan, calling city planning to get a permit or finding a contractor was almost impossible. We experienced what felt like never ending delays and rising costs each time we went to purchase building supplies. Eventually, the stars aligned and two years later we were ready to open.
In the last few years, we have also experienced all of the price increases that our customers are feeling when they go to the grocery store. Everything we started out purchasing to make our products in 2019 on our food truck have doubled, sometimes quadrupled. At both our Creamery and Doughnutry locations, we are constantly price evaluating and sourcing our ingredients from different vendors as prices continue to climb. We make all of our baked goods, mix-ins, ice cream, doughnuts, icings, etc. from scratch with real ingredients. We know that is what makes our products stand out but it also adds a significant cost in both ingredients and labor. This struggle is not unique to us, every small business owner feels this in some capacity right now. We are thankful for each and every one of our customers that support us and we do not take that for granted!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
What sets us apart is our commitment to producing homemade products with real ingredients and our desire to be a family friendly destination. We work hard in both the back of house producing delicious products and also the front of house ensuring we have a welcoming, clean environment for you to enjoy those products.
Our Creamery specializes in scratch made ice cream, baked goods and soft pretzels. We source our milk for our ice cream from a local dairy, Sunrise, in Crossville. Our ice cream has a high fat content and is minimally whipped, giving it a rich, creamy texture. From day one, our Peanut Butter Oreo, Banana Pudding and Mocha Brownie flavors have been some of our best sellers. We have also slowly added our homemade cheesecake slices as a regular staple and customers love them!
Our Doughnutry specializes in scratch made doughnuts, made with homemade fillings and frostings, cinnamon rolls, pastries and coffee. Our doughnuts are twice as big as a regular doughnut and made with real ingredients, no store bought mixes in sight. My mother has worked for years perfecting her cinnamon roll recipe and they are soft and pillowy, just as a good roll should be. We’ve also loved adding in new rotating pastries and savory options. We are sourcing our coffee from local roasters, Seed Coffee and Autumn Ridge Roasters. We have loved supporting other local small businesses through our offerings!
Who else deserves credit in your story?
We credit our wonderful customers that show up day after day with the largest reason why we have been so successful. It continues to amaze us that we have found such a welcoming reception in Knoxville and we truly have the very best customers. We never take for granted that they are the reason we are here and we are always beyond grateful for their love and support.
My father, Merlin, deserves his own heaping helping of gratitude and love. From day one, he has been our biggest cheerleader and works tirelessly to keep our stores running efficiently. He remodeled our food truck, did the majority of construction on our Creamery and Doughnutry buildings, and is constantly coming behind us and fixing all the equipment we manage to break. He truly knows how to do it all and we would not be where we are without him.
My mother, Suvilla, is the true Sugar Queen and is the genius behind all of the wonderful products our customers love. Her love of baking and knowledge in the kitchen is the key to our success and something we are all thankful to have learned from her. She is the glue that holds the four of us together.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thesugarqueen.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesugarqueendoughnutry
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheSugarQueenDoughnutry/
- Other: https://thesugarqueencreamery.com
