One month before the first issue of Biz New Orleans was published in October 2014, one of our bloggers wrote a little profile on a new company that had just been formed the previous year by three local men — childhood friends Aaron Vogel, Chris Audler and Stephen Cali.
All three had experience working in the restaurant business — Vogel and Audler were executives at New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood Co. — and had decided to team up and create their own venture. The result was District Donuts. Sliders. Brew.
Instead of creating a concept and then looking for a place to put it, the three men went about things the opposite way — falling for a 1,700-square-foot shop in the Lower Garden District next to Stein’s Deli on Magazine Street and then asking themselves what it was that particular area was missing.
Apparently it was missing more than 200 varieties of specialty donuts served all day and created completely from scratch (even the sprinkles), as well as sandwiches, sliders and coffee.
It turns out, this was a gap waiting to be filled in a lot of neighborhoods.
Just a year after opening, District Donuts opened a second location further up the same street, a less-than-200-square-foot spot in Uptown New Orleans on the corner of Arabella and Magazine. Less than two years later, in 2016, the company expanded again with the opening of another location, this time in Lakeview.
District Donuts’ most aggressive growth, however, came in 2017 with the opening of two new locations, including its first out of New Orleans. In February the company opened at Elmwood Shopping Center, adding craft beer to the menu — a first for any of their stores. In May, the most recent addition to their brand was made in Baton Rouge’s Towne Center.
Along the way, the company has racked up a fair share of local and national attention, topping must-try lists from The Food Network, New York Post, Huffington Post, MSN and Travel & Leisure Magazine, who proclaimed District to be on a short list of America’s best donut shops, specifically calling out their Vietnamese Iced Coffee donut.
The most recent accolade is from the Foodable Network, which, based on consumer data, proclaimed District Donuts home of the “Best Donut in the Nation.”
What’s next for these donut dynamos?
According to Cali, it’s more expansion even further from home.
“Right now we are focused on growing out of state,” he said.
