‘Build your own’ trend spreads to doughnuts

First, you choose from a selection of uniquely flavored doughnuts like green tea and red velvet. Next, you choose your toppings.

Frosting? Nuts? Sprinkles? The combinations are seemingly endless.

Poqet Donuts in Irvine, which held a soft opening last week, lets its customers build their own doughnuts. (Poqet is pronounced pocket.)

A grand opening is expected sometime this month.

“I wanted to do something different than traditional doughnuts,” said owner Fenny Yan, speaking in a thick Chinese accent.

She said that taking a basic doughnut and having people add their own toppings is in keeping with the create-your-own food trend of the last few years.

Take, for example, the Mexican chain restaurant Chipotle and its build-your-own-burrito technique, and, more locally, Pokinometry, which allows patrons to customize basic poké bowls of sushi rice and sashimi.

Poqet Donuts, which is currently operating under the name Donut Star until Yan gets permission from the city and her landlord to change the name, is one of the first build-your-own doughnut shops in the Southern California area. Similar shops can be found in Los Angeles.

Yan, who also owns a Donut Star franchise location in Dana Point, which sells the traditional fare, said Poqet Donuts’ doughnuts are appealing because they come in a variety of unglazed and cake flavors like green tea, red velvet, pumpkin, blueberry and butterscotch.

Customers can add sprinkles, nuts, fruit and other toppings available at different stations. Yan also included a chocolate fountain, with the children in mind.

The goods are baked hourly throughout the day, so they’re always hot and fresh, Yan said.

“After we opened that first Donut Star one year ago, I realized customers don’t like traditional doughnuts so much anymore,” she said. “We tried to find another way to sell fresh and hot doughnuts that they could create.”

Doughnuts are the business’ only focus. Don’t expect to find croissants, bagels and other morning pastries.

Yan said her goal is to open more shops and create a unique experience that keeps the customers coming back.

“We want customers to join us,” she said. “We want to keep the relationship with them.”

*

IF YOU GO

What: Poqet Donuts

Where: 17655 Harvard Ave., Suite B, Irvine

Hours: 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays; 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends

Cost: $2 for a basic glazed or cake doughnut, and 50 cents to $1 for each topping

Info: facebook.com/PoqetDonuts