By Ryan Slattery
There are doughnuts and then there’s Pinkbox Doughnuts. With its fanciful flavors, colorful box and fun atmosphere, Pinkbox Doughnuts has delivered an entirely new doughnut culture to Las Vegas. It’s a brand so many have fallen in love with. Just as CEO Stephen Siegel did before purchasing the Pinkbox in 2018.
“Being from Los Angeles, I grew up eating doughnuts my whole life. There was a doughnut shop on every corner,” Siegel says. “But it was never on my mind to get into the business.”
That only happened when the businessman stumbled upon the brand when his wife brought home a box of doughnuts. He said once he saw the name and the logo he thought it had “unlimited potential.” At the time, Pinkbox consisted of two small shops.
“The name and logo really stood out, but it was unbranded,” Siegel recalls. “So, I created a concept and a brand around the name. Now, there’s not a detail that’s missed on the inside or out. Every single piece of the business is branded. It’s what we call “Pinkboxed out.”
As an eye-catching roadside attraction inspired by Willy Wonka and Disneyland, Siegel says his goal is to “spread smiles” and “overwhelm the customer” with the whimsical decor and mind-blowing doughnut offerings.
“Pinkbox is a fun, modern day version of the old-fashioned doughnut shop, with a few twists,” says Siegel.
The creative nature behind the doughnuts has built a cult-like following. Pinkbox has hundreds of doughnut varieties in rotation and routinely offers more than 70 types of doughnuts in its display cases, yet it’s when Siegel pulls or retires a particular doughnut that he hears about it.
“We like to rotate flavors in and out,” he explains. “Often, when we do, we get tremendous feedback. People absolutely freak out. It happens all the time. I don’t think there’s one doughnut that I removed where there was just total silence.”
Of course there are doughnuts that will never fade away. Pinkbox’s most popular is the OG, a plain glazed American classic, while trademarked signatures like Pinky®, Pooh® and its DoughCro® line of croissant doughnuts in flavors like blueberry, Nutella, and maple-bacon are popular picks. The company also has licensed partnerships with the Raiders, Vegas Golden Knights and Care Bears to produce branded doughnuts. In addition, Pinkbox releases seasonal flavors and a new doughnut of the month flavor. It’s an exhausting, but rewarding, dance that includes every-Thursday tastings to pick the next best flavor.
Siegel is big on appearances and the shops are meant to be entered and explored. Each Pinkbox location is different–Siegel says they don’t want to take a “cookie cutter” approach. Once “gung-ho” on the drive-thru concept, he admits he doesn’t love it as much even though drivers will soon navigate their cars through a ring of giant doughnuts upon its launch.
“We have some fun stuff coming,” Siegel says. “But really our brand is for you to walk inside. I want you to walk in, see the case and be overwhelmed by the amount of doughnuts and that just can’t happen on a menu board.”
In recent years Pinkbox has grown. The company now has 12 shops with nine in development and expansion outside of Las Vegas fired up. Siegel says the future includes several shops in Salt Lake City, another in St. George, Utah, and possibly Arizona.
“Slow and steady growth,” says Siegel. “I mean we’d love to have 500 stores tomorrow, but you know we want to make sure that we have everything right. Everything we do is about putting a smile on someone’s face.”
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For more information visit: pinkboxdoughnuts.com
