New doughnut shop opening just steps from popular SLO County beach. Here’s a look
It takes a quirky sense of entrepreneurial adventure to look at a tiny, shuttered former fish smokehouse in Cayucos and envision a new doughnut shop in it.
That’s exactly what Ben and Jessica Brown did in November.
The Browns, daughter Zaiah Brown and the two younger Brown siblings hope to officially open their Surf Rat Donuts there at 101 D St. very soon, but in the meantime have been holding an off-and-on soft launch.
All their doughnuts will be made from scratch — unusual in today’s market.
The family from Los Osos will start small, making vanilla cake doughnuts served plain, sugared, cinnamon sugared and glazed.
“We’ll add other flavors and kinds, once we’ve worked out the kinks,” the couple said Tuesday after their first on-site test run. That will likely include getting a bigger fry kettle unit, they said.
Surf Rat’s ultimate product mix could also eventually include raised doughnuts and specialties, Ben Brown said.
The shop didn’t have permanent signage, a website or social media pages yet, and there was still a lot more to do before the shop is “done.” But the aromas of freshly fried doughnuts should alert passersby about the delights being created there.
Why couple chose Cayucos for doughnut shop
The Browns were heading to a nearby Cayucos restaurant for breakfast when Ben spotted the empty, 250-square-foot space just a block from Cayucos Pier and across “the wall” from the sandy shores of Cayucos State Beach.
From 2001 to early January 2022, it had been Ruddell’s Smokehouse, a local culinary legend with national cred, especially for its smoked fish tacos and Jim Ruddell’s ebullient personality.
After his death in 2018, his family kept the business going, but closed when their landlord told them he had to tear down the building. The Ruddells planned to move back into the new structure, but the landlord sold the property instead, and the buildings are still standing.
When Ben Brown peered in the tiny shop’s window in November, he saw on a nearby wall a small, nondescript, handwritten sign with tiny print saying only “For rent.”
“Someone really didn’t want to rent this place,” he told The Tribune by phone in late June.
It was a lightbulb moment, one that has since taken more than eight months to go from that initial moment of inspiration to reality.
Los Osos family started in doughnut business with Farmers Market, mobile food truck
For more than a decade, the Browns and their three kids had made and sold mini doughnuts as Sugar Lips Mini Donut, launching it in October 2007 at the downtown San Luis Obispo Farmers Market.
Soon, people were asking them to cater desserts at weddings and other events, so the Browns shifted their business to a “tiny little vintage trailer that Ben fixed up,” Jessica said.
“We took our business mobile,” she said. “The doughnuts were warm and made to order with a doughnut machine that people could watch. What’s not to love?”
She added: “We really had no idea what we were doing. We just kinda figured it out.”
Then the pandemic hit, farmers markets closed and people canceled weddings.
So, they briefly closed Sugar Lips, before selling it later — it’s still going strong, Jessica added.
Next, they lucked into buying Jimmy Bumps restaurant (which eventually became Hazard’s restaurant in Los Osos), but, once business really picked up there, it proved to be “way too much for us,” Jessica said of her young family of five. Ben was not only cooking for up to 16 hours a day, the master woodworker was completing a raft of projects at the restaurant.
Eventually they sold it in 2020 to “awesome” partner Sarah Mavety.
The Browns were ripe for a change, even though Jessica was a medical coder for French Hospital Medical Center and Ben had his screen-printing and art businesses.
Then, on the spur of the moment, they decided to take their doughnut-making expertise to brick-and-mortar status in Cayucos, albeit on a small scale.
How did Surf Rat get its name?
The conversion from smokehouse to Surf Rat Donuts been an adventure in remodeling and navigating county permitting processes, Ben said.
Making the sweet treats requires specialized, often pricey equipment, some of which has to meet fire and county codes.
And how did the new doughnut shop get its name?
Surf Rat is based on Ben’s lifelong love of surfing and skateboarding, and it’s courtesy of a friend who’d planned a similarly named doughnut business that he never pursued, Jessica said.
Then, on another hunch when Ben reached out to one of his pro skateboarding heroes, Stacy Peralta of Cayucos (now a director, artist and entrepreneur), Ben asked about Peralta’s artwork, recently posted on Instagram, asking if he might, consider displaying some of his paintings at Surf Rat.
“I didn’t expect an answer,” Ben said.
He was astonished to not only get a graciously friendly response but an immediate yes, plus an offer to let Surf Rat display one of Peralta’s skateboard decks.
Moving forward, the plan is for Ben and Zaiah to run the shop, with help from Jessica and sons Zeke, 18, and Eli, 16.
The daughter, 20, moved back to San Luis Obispo County from San Francisco to take on her former role, making doughnuts in the family business.
Once their test period is over, Surf Rat Donuts’ tentatively plans to be open Tuesdays through Sundays, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. (or until they run out of doughnuts for the day).
In the meantime, call them at 805-226-6351 or follow the scent of fresh doughnuts to the shop.
This story was originally published July 9, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
