A doughnut shop in Rochester, New York, recently decorated their product with a resemblance of US health official Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a ranking member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
Salvatore’s owner, Sam Fantauzzo, said that demand for the ‘Doc Donuts’ unexpectedly hit the roof. The businessman said he came up with the idea of putting Fauci’s face on doughnuts after hearing complaints of a decline in sales from Donuts Delite franchise owner Nick Semeraro, who runs the doughnut shop out of a Salvatore’s Pizza location in Rochester.
“He called me last Monday, basically half his business was down,” Fantauzzo said, cited by Fox News. “He’s got employees that have been with us for 10 years, and he didn’t want to lay anybody off”.
Fantauzzo said he initially tried to help his colleague by selling Semeraro’s products at his 29 Salvatore’s Pizza locations, but the move did not improve sales. He later came up with the idea of imparting the likeness of the health expert on doughnuts when he saw Fauci on TV calming people amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic hitting the world.
“Why don’t we create a really cool, different doughnut with Dr. Fauci’s face on it?” he said. “He’s on the news a lot, he’s really calming, he’s knowledgeable, he’s not political… We’ll make some, we’ll put them on social media. Let’s try it”.
Fantauzzo added that business “just took off” after making the doughnuts available. He said that they used edible materials to impart Fauci’s face on the product, gradually cranking out at least 1,000 of the tasy circular morsels each day and, by Friday lunchtime, they had sold 2,000 “Doc Donuts”.
“When I thought of putting Dr. Fauci on the doughnuts, I liked him from his demeanor on TV and all that, but I didn’t know much about him,” Fantauzzo reportedly acknowledged. “But we’ve seen retired doctors and nurses coming in to try it… he’s been their hero for years and years”.
Fantauzzo and Semerar are said to be planning to ship “Doc Donuts” to other US states and are thinking about rolling out two more products with the faces of Surgeon General Jerome Adams and notorious White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx.
“Some people in Washington DC called about them,” Fantauzza claimed. “If the Pentagon wants some of these doughnuts, we’re gonna figure out a way to get ‘em there and make it happen!”
“We just wanted to keep the bakers going, wanted to put a smile on people’s faces,” he said.