Family partners dream up recipe for bakery’s prosperity

Her start in the food business was out of necessity.

“I needed to support myself — and work somewhere where I could get in enough hours to save up money for college,” recalls Norma McLeod, now principal owner of Donut Central in Columbus, regarding her start in 1978. “Restaurant work supplied that. I loved it.”

McLeod’s first taste of the business was while she was still in high school. She had landed an entry-level job at the Bonanza Steakhouse in Anderson, Indiana, and worked there for two years.

With that experience as a building block, the young woman was managing her own restaurant just two years later. While running the Pizza Hut in Seymour from 1982-1985, she got to know Kyle McLeod, who managed the Pizza Hut in nearby Columbus. They married in August 1985.

Close family ties in the McLeod clan have played a significant role in the success of their first ownership stake in the food business, Donut Central, which opened five years ago this week.

Husband Kyle, who owns a local construction business, created live-edge wooden tables where Donut Central customers can relax and enjoy morning donuts and beverages at the 1504 Central Ave. location.

Daughter Marlee Brunni and son Coleman McLeod, who are business partners with their mother, were part of the bakery start-up. Their spouses, Andrew Brunni and Danielle McLeod, help out as well, along with two dozen employees of the business.

“When you’re working with your family, it takes a while to learn what everyone’s roles would be, based on their skills,” Norma McLeod said. “You need to learn what drives and motivates them. It took a year and one-half to figure out everyone’s strengths.”

Norma’s specialty is creativity — in how donuts and the shop as a whole are decorated, for example. Daughter Marlee’s strength is her organizational skills, so she oversees the business side of the bakery. Product quality drives son Coleman, so he has an important hand in making sure donuts and other menu items meet the owners’ and customers’ expectations every day.

“The rest of the family picks up and assists,” Norma said.

After her children were born, Norma left the hospitality business and was a stay-at-home mom for more than 15 years. With the two of them now working side by side with her as business partners, family and food have come full circle in the shape of a round donut.

The family has called Columbus home since 1993, relocating from Nashville, which was a good geographical fit initially when Kyle worked in Bloomington.

“We liked Columbus and its schools,” Norma said as the idea of relocating came up as their circumstances changed. “It’s a nice place to raise a family.”

Loyal to Columbus, the McLeods discovered the city’s residents loved them right back in March 2017 as anticipation built regarding the bakery’s opening.

“When we first started, the line stretched into the parking lot before we even opened for the day. We feel very, very supported,” Norma said.

And that’s the main reason she gives for Donut Central beating the odds of most small business startups, which have a 90 percent failure rate according to the Small Business Administration.

“It’s the community. Anytime a new business opens in Columbus, you will see a line for months.”

But instilling fun has also been a key ingredient in the bakery’s success.

“I always thought I would own my own restaurant, but I wanted something fun,” said Norma, who was an assistant manager for Kroger Marketplace in Columbus before starting the bakery. “ … something that was fun, that you would not take too seriously and that people really liked.”

What she came up with has broad appeal — especially to children, with chalkboard paint walls and 6-inch Scrabble blocks on shelves near the entrance. Both give customers a creative outlet to craft their own messages to others.

And the final two weeks of each July, the shop’s interior gets a Hogwarts makeover to celebrate Harry Potter’s July 31 birthday.

Adding to the atmosphere are a chalkboard menu behind the counter that came from an Indianapolis school and eight elegant brass chandeliers purchased from the Sabre Room, a Chicago area wedding venue that operated from 1949 to 2016, where headline entertainers such as Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and Elvis Presley once performed.

The donut shop’s glistening counter was created from four pieces of 3-inch-thick, 4-feet-long granite, which also came from the Sabre Room.

Donut Central’s atmosphere has been a magnet weekly since August 2018 for a Columbus couple, Rev. Felipe Martinez and Tracy Heaton de Martinez. Each Thursday morning, before he heads over to First Presbyterian Church and she begins her work day raising funds for Turning Point Domestic Violence Services, they dutifully turn out for #DonutThursday.

The Martinez family tradition initially included their two teen sons, students at Columbus Signature Academy New Tech High School at the time. Now with one son in college and the other with other morning priorities, Donut Thursday often just includes just Mom and Dad. But sometimes friends from out of town have come to Columbus for a donut delight — from as far away as Philadelphia.

The Columbus regulars are so well known by the Donut Central staff that “Will you be having the usual?” is more of a greeting than a menu discussion. Since the answer is always “yes,” counter workers hand the pastor a maple bacon donut and deliver a cinnamon sugar donut to his wife.

While such loyal customers find comfort in “the usual,” the McLeods have not been afraid to change on a dime if circumstances require that.

When the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing requirements hurt many businesses, especially walk-in food providers, the McLeods tweaked their business model on the fly. They went to curbside service in spring 2020, which gave the owners an idea of what providing a mobile command center — an off-site truck with a walk-up service window — might be like.

Today, the Donut Central mobile unit is out in about a dozen nearby communities on a rotating basis from 6:30 to 10:30 a.m. Monday-Saturday. By taking their product to the people in each county adjacent to Bartholomew, the McLeods have been able to recover pandemic-induced drops in revenue.

“Lots of people are urging us to set up shops in their communities,” Norma said, especially Shelbyville, Nashville and Seymour.

“But with supply chain challenges (such as cardboard and plastic shortages), we’re waiting on that,” she said.

Until expansion becomes too appealing to resist, Norma finds comfort in achieving her sweet dream as a startup bakery owner, wearing dual hats of mom and shop owner with her offspring at her side.