Melbourne Goldeluck’s make $1.5 million from cheeky doughnuts as it goes national with online delivery
Despite this treat costing $36, people can’t get enough and “love” sending it to friends and family, helping to make this business a booming success.
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When Phillip Kuoch decided to ride the Nutella doughnut craze a few years back with his family’s bakery business, he could never have imagined that Goldeluck’s bestsellers would come in the shape of some very “cheeky” body parts.
The 27-year-old never intended to go into business, but his parents who are refugees from Cambodia found a bakery they wanted to buy after many years of searching.
After the contract was signed in 2015, his dad got really sick and Mr Kuoch wanted to pitch in and help.
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At first it was an old school bakery selling the usual bread, pies and sausage rolls, he said.
“When I first came into business I didn’t want to shake the boat too much as it was already a pretty established business. I came in and it wasn’t at a place where I could hire a baker, so I had to self teach myself how to bake,” he tells news.com.au.
“We lost a lot of business and regulars stopped coming to the store and I was looking at ways to bring them back. At the time in Melbourne there was a Nutella doughnut craze a couple of years ago and I thought ‘Why not make Nutella doughnuts?’ as we already make jam doughnuts.”
The first day he was “over the moon” when they sold six of the Nutella doughnuts, which then turned into 20, growing to 100 and more each day as word got out.
Still in year 12, Mr Kuoch and his sister pitched the idea to his mum of doing a pop-up store at a festival.
“As an Asian mum she was not a risk-taker, so when I put the idea in her head of the festival she was not happy to pay $600 a day. So when she had to go to Cambodia, we snuck behind her back and did it ourselves and sold 1500 doughnuts in two hours. We had to limit people to one doughnut per person,” he said.
“We also launched a croissant doughnut, similar to a cronut but we called it a dossaint, and we were one of first bakeries to do that and we sold insane amount of dossiants that day.”
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When his mum returned, the siblings had to confess what they had done, but she did the “Asian parent thing” where she didn’t tell them she was impressed, he said. However, he could see that she was happy.
The local shopping centre approached Goldeluck’s about coming in to do a pop-up shop but again his mother didn’t want to take the risk, so management offered to pay for everything and all they had to do was bring the doughnuts.
“There were 200 people lining up at launch and that was the turning point,” he said.
The pop-up shop turned permanent in 2019 and then another store was opened.
“I like to think of our doughnuts as pretty gourmet, we like to try new flavours and one time we made our take on (Black Star Pastry’s) famous watermelon cakes – we recreated that in our cronut range,” he explained.
“We have had a doughnut with syringes and fairy floss. We are always constantly trying new things. Our doughnuts are very fun and it’s in our DNA to try new things.
“We have got doughnuts that you would expect at doughnuts store, cronuts and an American range which are like apple fritters and cinnamon scrolls, but we have also expanded beyond doughnuts and think we are much more than just doughnuts.”
But when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Mr Kuoch had to pivot the Melbourne-based business online quickly and it was a booming success.
Before last year’s lockdown, the Goldeluck’s online store turned over just $98,000 for the whole of 2019. Last year, online sales raked in over $1.5m with a delivery being made every 51 seconds on average.
Out of it came a surprisingly bestseller too – iced doughnuts in the shape of a penis, called Big D**k Energy as well as breasts with the product named Double D. Both sell for $36.
“It’s our topselling doughnut both in store and online as well,” he laughed. “It’s a very cheeky gift and people love sending that to their friends and family.”
But what does his mum think about them? “At first she said it was the most stupid idea ever,” he revealed. “She doesn’t work at the store, but comes to help on busy days so on Valentine’s Day she will come in and she is the one icing the human anatomy doughnuts, so she’s learned to trust us.”
Since July last year, Goldeluck’s has been doing deliveries around Australia, including cookies and brownies but 90 per cent of business was still in Melbourne. Then Mr Kuoch decided to give TikTok a try.
“I started posting on TikTok regularly in January. We talked about our story, we shared the story about our parents being refugees from Cambodia and shared staff packing orders and things went viral,” he said.
“We started getting people from Queensland and Sydney and outside of Australia learning about our brand. I think the figures we had was our national delivery has been increased by 50 per cent month on month and now makes up 20 per cent of business. It’s quite an achievement in such a short time being on TikTok.”
Just last month, Goldeluck’s launched a new product called a cake explosion box, which costs $40 and has quickly become a customer favourite, said Mr Kuoch.
There’s the option of eight cake flavours, including chocolate mud cake, snickers, biscoff and white choc raspberry, and explosions of either butterflies, rose flowers or Cadbury favourites, while the box can also be personalised with four photos.
“The best way to explain it is a jack in the box cake in the middle, but when you open the box all these paper butterflies fly out,” he said. “We sold out in less than two weeks.”
When he posted a video of the cake explosion box on TikTok, it received over 7 million views and more than 530,000 likes when it was unveiled.
Mr Kuoch said he is looking to offer their goods globally as well as using technology to make the business stand out.
“We are in the planning process of creating goods that revolve around gifting and sending, so innovative and fun gifts,” he said.
Since joining TikTok, Goldeluck’s has amassed a following of over 330,000 people and received over 40 million views.
The brand’s Double D doughnut video, which received 1.5 million views in just 24 hours, resulted in a 350 per cent increase in the product’s sales, he added.
Originally published as Melbourne Goldeluck’s make $1.5 million from cheeky doughnuts as it goes national with online delivery
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