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Fortunately for those who don’t mind a bit of decadence, Jolley shares his vision with the world on Friday mornings, starting at 5:30, through the service window of a 9-foot, 1979 Burro mini-camper.
Though Jolley Doughnuts also appears at fairs and festivals in the area, and semi-regularly at the North Haverhill Agway on Saturdays, the camper’s primary location is on the Route 302 truck pull-off, across from Blue Mountain Union School in Wells River. Cars can pull right up to the window, as a sort of doughnut drive-through. On several occasions, Jolley recounted with glee, a school bus has done so.
“McDonald’s can’t do that,” he said, raising his voice over the buzz of his generator. “But we can!”
This, essentially, is Jolley’s modus operandi in all his ventures, of which there are several: Be different. Offer what others don’t, or can’t.
True to this philosophy, when Jolley isn’t decorating fresh-from-the-fryer doughnuts with maple glaze and bacon bits, he can be found at fairs and parties, either atop a unicycle as Buddy the Clown, who claims to tie a balloon poodle behind his back faster than anyone on earth, or as Pirate Man Dan, the landlocked seaman who rolls around in a bubble-blowing pirate ship.
Funnily enough, the doughnut booth actually owes its inception to Jolley’s background in clownery.
“I’ve been clowning since I was in diapers,” said Jolley, now 25. He grew up in Groton, the son of a military man who found joy in a weekend gig as a clown; his mother eventually got pulled into the ring, as well. And so, reared as they were on facepaint and juggling clubs, the six Jolley children — all homeschooled by their mother — banded together with their parents to form a traveling clown troupe, Jolley Family Clowns.
From this upbringing, Jolley learned how to parlay quirkiness into making a buck.
“It’s the Jolley family curse,” he said. “Everywhere we go, we look for business opportunities.”
He also learned about the unspoken rule that governs most fairgrounds: There can only be one or two types of a particular vendor, so as not to create too much competition between booths. Most fairs had your typical assortment of pizza, hot dogs, lemonade stands. But doughnuts? To continue with the tenor of this story, let’s just say that there was a hole in the market, and Jolley set out to fill it.
He bought his camper last fall, fully equipped with a fry unit and a sink. It took him a while to fine-tune his recipe.
“You’d think it would be hard to mess up a doughnut,” Jolley said with a self-deprecating grin. After consulting with local bakers, as well as his mother, he finally hit the sweet spot: cakey, but not dry; moist, but not soggy; rich, but not sickeningly so (at least when eaten in moderate doses).
By Christmastime, Jolley Doughnuts was up and running most weekdays. But the first week Jolley opened the booth, he went in early to heat up the fryer and realized someone had smashed the lock, broken in and stolen the cash box, which contained all of $25.
“That really sucked,” he said. “At least they didn’t steal the generator.”
It happened again in March. During the theft, someone shattered the glass window of the camper, which he has yet to replace; a Jolley Doughnuts banner covers the hole.
Since nailing down his basic recipe, which has earned him a loyal customer base among Route 302 commuters, Jolley has started going rogue. He likes to experiment with new and decadent concoctions — like doughnut-fried Oreos, which softens the chocolate cookie and makes for a gooey cream center.
Then there’s the doughnut-fried bacon on a stick, which usually sells out by 9 a.m. due to people buying it up in bulk. He greeted a visiting reporter with a chocolate-hazelnut-Oreo frappe, blended with dark chocolate Monin syrup. It was the closest thing to dying and going to heaven — in more ways than one.
Sure, it’s junk food, but Jolley isn’t pretending otherwise. His menu doesn’t boast of being artisanal, or locally sourced, or remotely good for you. (Though, to be fair, he fries his doughnuts in vegetable shortening that hardens as it cools, so the doughnuts themselves don’t get as greasy as they would if he fried them in oil.)
“We’re not very diet-friendly,” he acknowledged. “Sometimes I get flak for that online. People think we should offer healthier options. But we don’t really have a ton of room to expand into that kind of stuff.”
It’s also not really what Jolley Doughnuts is about. It’s about the novelty of having the only mini-camper around that offers a heaping bucket of doughnuts for $8.
Jolley and a couple of part-time employees make the doughnuts right in the booth, where, amidst a clutter of various ingredients and dough drippings, sits the Belshaw Donut Robot.
Jolley described it as the “Cadillac” of doughnut machines: At full throttle, it can churn out 120 dozen doughnuts per hour. “It pretty much does everything,” he said, “except spell ‘doughnut’ right.”
After the Robot heats up to around 400 degrees, which takes about 45 minutes to an hour depending on the weather, it’s ready to receive the batter.
The batter goes into the hopper, which is a funnel-shaped device that shapes the donuts and deposits them into the fryer. After a few minutes, the machine automatically flips the doughnuts over, to fry them on the other side.
The whole cooking process takes about eight or nine minutes, and is hands-off enough that it frees Jolley to chat up his customers. Many of them are regulars, or belong to the close-knit community of local fair vendors, Jolley said. Some greeted him with hugs; others refused to let him make their orders on the house, despite his insistence.
“There’s something really cool about giving someone a doughnut-fried Oreo or whatever, and watching their face do that thing when they take a bite and just go, ‘oh my god,’ ” he said. “The best part about doing this is making people smile.”
Not to mention that his relationships with his customers give him the street cred that, as a former homeschooled kid, he said he’s long craved. It’s hard to recognize someone through clown makeup, but now he’s the most popular guy on Route 302.
“I walk into Walmart now and people are like, ‘Hey, it’s the doughnut guy!’ ” Jolley said. “I’ve got to say, I’m fine with that.”
Jolley Doughnuts is open most Fridays from 5:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. off Route 302 in Wells River, and frequently appears at other locations and venues in the area. For information on where and when to find Jolley Doughnuts, check for updates on its Facebook page or contact Daniel Jolley at 802-522-3449.
EmmaJean Holley can be reached at eholley@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.