Living the sweet life of a doughnut proprietor in La Cañada
Golden Donut Place owner Ngy Si mans his shop on Foothill Boulevard, which survives there despite rising rents and nearby competition.
Ngy Si was working as a mail carrier in South Pasadena in 1994, when his sister’s husband approached him with a business proposition: How would he feel about going into the doughnut business?
At the time, Si’s brother-in-law Tony Yoong owned Golden Donut Place in Arcadia, had met with relative success and had recently tried to expand the business by opening up a second storefront in La Cañada. But just a few months into that enterprise, he realized he’d bitten off more than he could chew.
“It was too much work for him,” Si recalled in an interview Friday. “He wanted to sell, and I wanted to do something different. So I bought it from him.”
Golden Donut Place owner Ngy Si, left, along with his wife also supervises the cafeteria grill at St. Francis High School in La Cañada Flintridge.
La Cañada’s Golden Donut Place is still going strong, despite the typical encroachments from grocery-chain bakeries and corporate-owned shops in nearby towns, and the sky-rocketing cost of maintaining a commercial presence on Foothill Boulevard.
“It’s a nickel-and-dime business, so we need volume to add up,” Si said, estimating the shop’s bakers prepare more than 100 dozen doughnuts and pastries each day. “Flour and water doesn’t cost much, but when you add in my overhead, it’s a lot.”
To help things along, the business owner pulls double-duty, managing workers and troubleshooting occasional issues at the cash-only doughnut shop while also overseeing the cafeteria grill as a subcontractor at St. Francis High School, a gig he and wife Toni have held for the past 10 years.
On the typical weekday, Si wakes up at his Temple City home at around 5 a.m. He checks in at Golden Donut Place and picks up a few boxes on his way to the high school, where he sets up for the breakfast crowd by 6 a.m. He stays at the campus throughout the school day, occasionally leaving to purchase food items and ingredients, unless a doughnut shop emergency requires his presence.
“Sometimes it’s unpredictable in the doughnut business — you never know,” Si said, explaining he had been called in just that morning to whip up a few batches of the treats when the shop was understaffed.
Another unpredictability of the trade involves keeping a steady base of customers in the face of carb-avoidant diet trends and legislation restricting the distribution of delectable items in public schools. That’s something Michael Heng, Si’s nephew and a Golden Donut Place employee since 1997, has witnessed firsthand over the years.
Still, Heng identified peak times (Fridays and Saturdays) and seasons (when youth sports are active, for example) when locals’ hunger for high-quality pastries outweighs their carb-free, gluten-free leanings. He estimated about 90% of Golden Donut Place’s business comes from regular customers.
“When they come in, we have a pretty good idea of what they want,” Heng said. “We’ve met a lot of great people here over the years. There’s a real hometown feeling here.”
Loyalty among customers is so strong that after a Dec. 19 armed robbery — in which a man carrying a handgun held up a female employee and made off with just $7 cash — a wave of La Cañada residents not only walked in the store to purchase doughnuts, but several made unofficial donations of $7 as a sign of support.
Among Golden Donut Place’s list of regular customers is Bob Miller, a retired La Cañada High School counselor who’s been making trips there for coffee and doughnuts for the past 20 years. What keeps him coming back, aside from the baked goods, is the service in general and Si, in particular.
“They know almost everybody’s name when they come there,” Miller said. “They know my kids and my grandkids, and they ask about them. My grandkids had their first doughnuts (ever) at Ngy’s. It’s really a nice community place.”
Jose Olvera, an employee of Si’s at St. Francis who goes by the nickname “Chino,” said every day after 4 p.m. when the doughnut shop closes, volunteers from St. Bede Roman Catholic Church’s charity group Brother’s Helpers stop by to pick up leftovers for distribution to the homeless in Los Angeles.
“His doughnuts are very good, and when he has a lot of doughnuts leftover he gives them to the homeless, and to me,” Olvera said, smiling. “I love my job. Coming here is like paraiso.”
Even as his monthly rent climbs, Si says he plans to stay put for the foreseeable future, serving up the goods in a town he’s come to think of as home.
“I really love La Cañada, and I want to stay,” he said. “I’m not ruling anything out, but at the moment I’m content.”
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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com
Twitter: @SaraCardine
