Doughnut Dynasty at PIX-US
One cold, January day PIX-US partner Mark called up his marketing guru—that’s me, Annie—and started (without saying hello) reading some very familiar words.
“Hey,” I said. “How do you have that? It’s not going to be published until February.”
Mark just kept reading. Then, since we have a solidly collegial rapport, I said, “I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me, if you really like it, or if you just want a doughnut.”
Finally, Mark said that Andie Rose at O.Henry Magazine had asked him to photograph the cover story I wrote about the boom in Greensboro doughnuts shops—a doughnut renaissance if you will. We’d had a conversation about the magazine days before, but neither of us knew we’d been assigned to the same piece.
I’d already involved a lot of my friends via Facebook asking for their favorite doughnuts and places to get them, inviting them to taste test with me. Clearly, Mark stopped following me, or he would’ve known the story was mine before looking for the byline midway through his first reading. Just saying.
Once we finished laughing at ourselves, the team felt compelled to have our own taste test in the name of science—and photography—of course. Stewart’s obsession with apple fritters got the entire staff hooked, making them the official doughnut of PIX-US.
One of the primary results from the test was that Rise, the new shop at Friendly Center, has the best fritters in town—“made with apples, not apple-pie filling.” You might say we were frittering our time away eating them.
We bought three dozen doughnuts for the photo shoot, and clean up was a breeze. Somehow, by the end of it, nearly all of them had disappeared.
Mmmmm. Donuts: Check out the full story in O.Henry Magazine.