A face to face chat with the owner of the most famous doughnut shop in Glasgow
I visited Tantrum Doughnut on a cold morning in February.
To be honest I did not realise it was Fat Thursday- tell me now is there a better way to celebrate the last week of Carnival?
A chat with Annika Baille, founder and owner of Tantrum Doughnuts, Glasgow.
Warming up
We were supposed to meet with Annika at 10 am but I wanted to enjoy their crème brulee doughnut and a hot chocolate before her arrival.
To warm up a bit before our chat, to take some pictures with my camera but also to observe the
life in the shop. People coming in forgetting to close the door, coffee orders, kids on holidays enchanted staring at the display, the usual chat how are you, what are you up to repeated over and over
but done with real kindness. It is cozy in here hugging my mug, I got lost in my thoughts.
Some days I miss being surrounded by people.
I prepared my list of questions in the bus but I will give to the conversation a bit of freedom and
see where it brings us. Owning a business for many years gives me a privileged point of view, I
am in love in listening how other people built their dream and what brought them there.
How it started
Annika is, with her husband Iain, the owner of Tantrum Doughnuts.
If you are Glaswegian probably they no need introduction as surely you have tried their doughnuts at least once or someone close to you got obsessed with them. If you don't have this luck but you are planning a trip to Glasgow, put them on the map.
I got a bit of experience here as I am doughnut educated since they opened their first shop on Old Dumbarton road in 2015. A tiny unit not on the main road, behind the Kelvingrove museum, in a street that saw a real makeover since they moved there.
I am pretty confident to say it, even if Annika laughs at this, that they push this change and made this road a destination for food and coffee lovers. I can certainly prove this.
Annika is really conscious of the success Tantrum has reached and consolidated during these eight years. Her profile is genuine, there is no showing off here. This is a story of a great intuition that landed in town at the right moment and built daily with hard work.
"It all started with a fryer and a dream. Could I summarise in this sentence the beginning of this little local empire?" I asked.
Yes, actually. Iain my husband is a professional chef and worked for years in the pastry department of some of the most famous Scottish restaurants. Love for sugar and sweets was not new to him. Iain was working at Ox and Finch (another Glasgow's jewel) when our business idea saw the light.
D O U G H N U T S. Those little takeaway shops specialized in fresh doughnuts in the US caught our eyes. Something homemade with flavors that we had never seen here.
Why don't bring this to Glasgow? At that time there was nothing similar, only big chains.
So, she smiles while remembering this humble beginning. We had £400 savings at the time and we decided to invest them in buying a fryer at Curry's. We borrowed Iain's mum's mixer, printed some cards, built a website ourselves and we started our adventure in markets.
We kept initially our jobs and did this on weekends. Frying one doughnut after the other. Markets were a success, people were enthusiastic about our product, and we started also building a nice following on social media too.
We could not imagine that in less than one year we were opening our first unit.
Let it grow
"You built everything one step at a time, starting small."
Exactly.
We found a shop we thought we could afford in Dumbarton road and made it our first home. Minimal, basic. Everything was made here. Prepping- frying and selling all in the same shop. 20 doughnuts at a time- we were here from 1 am six days per week and the other day we were doing more prep for all the paperwork. A bit crazy thinking about that now!
We opened owning money to people- family, joiners. I remember the third week we were opened, I took the money from the till and I went to the bank to repay everyone. What a relief! And it started from there. We did not see a proper wage for months. Our team was me, Iain, and one of our friends and we could hire a new person in the kitchen only after 8 months.
Things went well we had to expand because we could not keep up with the demand. So we reinvested the money taking the other shop and just next door, bought new machinery and built it here the production center. It was exciting, we could not believe our eyes.
Our project was working. We knew we were making a different product, and we knew its quality but we never took it for granted thinking also about the skepticism we encountered before opening. But what is better than proving them wrong? I totally agree.
The Product
You knew that the ace upon your sleeve was a unique product, new and of high quality.
What is behind it and how did you manage to keep the same quality with your expansion?
Yes. The product was new, fresh and we were bringing original flavors to the market. Something that people could find only in our shop and handmade.
Our slogan says it all - made by people, not machines- and we kept doing our doughnuts this way since then.
We also try to use as many local products as we can like Corrie mains free range eggs -amazing orange yolk-, Black torn sea salt, our coffee is from Glaswegian company Paper cup.
We grew in numbers and that meant only that we needed to organize ourselves better with the production and I think we have reached our good dimension.
Talking about this, how is the typical day at Tantrum Doughnuts? Because as customers sometimes we see only the finished products and we don't have a clue about the work that is behind.
The day starts pretty early! There is a long process behind it that we can count on two days and that never stops.
Chefs go there at 3 in the morning.
We have doughnuts ready from the night before in the provers. A group of chefs starts frying them. This operation is quite long due to the high number of doughnuts we produce. Then they glaze them and add the fillings one after the other. Doughnuts in the boxes are ready to go out and reach our three shops at 7.30.
But the day is not over because at the same time, other chefs are starting all the preparation for the next day: some are mixing the dough, and others prepping the custard, the jams, and the glazing.
We do everything ourselves from scratch.
Then the doughnuts are getting shaped and put in the provers for the next day.
A lot of care needs to go into the process as a wrong measurement in our brioche dough can ruin everything and meaning no doughnuts for the day!
Navigating challenging times
Seeing your business grow is great and satisfying but with this also the number of responsibilities increases. These have also been tough years for the hospitality businesses considering Covid, lack of staff, prices dropping high.
My role at Tantrum changed a lot in the last few years as our family grew quickly with the arrival of our two babies. My routine went from doing everything for 7 days a week jumping from one duty to another for the past 5 years- managing the shops, doing social media, accountancy, and paperwork to a more balanced one thanks to delegating to my staff. Delegation is definitely something that helped our business grow well.
I found it so hard at the beginning as I used to be always around but if I look behind I asked myself: why did I not do this before? Our staff has been so good!
We have a very core team, both front of house and kitchen, staying with us from a long time. We focus a lot on training and letting people grow in the company.
Covid was challengig. The biggest worry was for our staff. The thought that we could not be able to keep everyone with us in their job could not make me sleep at night. There was a big level of uncertainty but also thanks to government help we managed to keep our shop open and stand up again. Initially only with the west end shop and then as the city got a bit more of life with the city center shop too.
Our business model was also already set up as a takeaway, so we made sure to have everything to trade again under those new conditions. The support we had from customers was huge.
How did you build your brand and kept interested in your product over the years?
I think we built trust- we gave consistency keeping the same quality and selling our doughnuts at a fair price, trying always to innovate with new products. We seasonally introduce new flavors over time or for special occasions like Christmas, Halloween, Easter, and even Star wars day! We have some bestsellers like the creme brulee one or the pistachio and hibiscus ring but we have also developed some Vegan doughnuts.
Social media also plays an important role in our growth and gives us a lot of visibility.
Networking and collaborating with other local businesses that share our values is also something that we enjoy doing. We did a fantastic one for example with Glasgow beer works- crème brulee doughnut ipa. Can you imagine a beer that tastes like our crème brulee doughnut?
Advice for new enterpreneurs
To finish: you are an inspiration for people that want to open a business in the food industry. If you have to give some advice to build a successful and healthy business, what they would be?
I think being realistic is one of the most important.
Being conscious that you don’t see a return overnight and that is a slow process. It can take time to get everything working in the way you thought.
Also, you need to be present almost 24/7, especially in the first few years when your business needs the most of you and you learn every day what you can adjust and improve.
Sacrifice is definitely behind our success.
I think is also good to have gained experience in the sector. It was so useful for us to have worked in different places and learned from different people for years. I always advise you to learn as much as you can. Even if you have the “last job” in the chain, you can observe and ask to learn more and bring it home. I am still living on the experience I had.
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