Hurts Donut targets 20-store mark

Already 13 stores in after three years in business, Hurts Donut Co. LLC has plans to increase its count to 20 by year’s end.

Co-founders and co-owners Tim and Kas Clegg launched their first store downtown in November 2013, followed less than a year later by their second in Norman, Oklahoma, and the Cleggs later sold it to a manager. Their third corporate store opened in the Queen City in November 2015. The remainder is made up of franchisees mostly in the Midwest, but stores span as far north and east as Middleton, Wisconsin, as far south as Frisco, Texas, and as far west as Tempe, Arizona. Their first franchise store — operated by a former babysitter of the couple’s son — opened in July 2015 in Wichita, Kansas.

“It was an instant success,” Tim Clegg said this morning as the monthly guest for Springfield Business Journal’s 12 People You Need to Know live interview series. “It blew away our other stores.”

Clegg said the company is working with franchisees to further grow the scope.

HurtsDonutCo.com lists a store each in Branson and Fayetteville, Arkansas, as coming soon, and Clegg said the owners currently are negotiating a franchise location in Memphis, Tennessee.

The new stores could help push Hurts Donut over the $10 million revenue mark, which Clegg said the company narrowly missed in 2016. The company’s latest store in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is averaging $100,000 in sales a week since opening last month, Clegg said.

“We’re happy that we were able to give them the opportunity, but then we’re a little jealous that our stores aren’t performing that way too,” he said.

Hurts Donut hasn’t officially started marketing franchising opportunities. Clegg said currently, through word-of-mouth, several applications come into his office a week.

The company is formalizing the process to solicit franchisees. Clegg said applicants are required to operate the stores themselves, as well as invest in their local community. Stores also must be a minimum of 3,500 square feet, and cities are carefully chosen so the Hurts Donut gourmet concept is a first in the market.

“It’s coming soon,” he said of opening up the franchising process, noting real estate selection is becoming a huge focus as well. “We’re getting pretty good at it.”