PHOENIX, Aug. 5 (Phoenix Times Online) — Daniel Tes said The Local Donut reached its worst week in about a decade during the summer of 2026: The Scottsdale, Arizona, shop could not make payroll.
Tes, the shop’s owner, turned to social media to ask customers, neighbors and God for help. The next day, customers filled the shop, and other local businesses prepaid doughnut orders for their customers as a pay-it-forward gesture.
Tes said the surge in business helped The Local Donut make payroll. The episode shows both the power and limits of a community response when a small business faces a cash-flow crisis.
What happened to The Local Donut?
Tes said business slowed during the summer after a difficult spring-training season. The pressure had been building for several weeks, he said, until the shop reached a point where it could not pay its employees.
“We felt the pressure after spring training to get things ready for summer, and we just couldn’t catch up,” Tes said. “Last week was probably our worst. We couldn’t make payroll.”
The Local Donut had been operating for about 10 years, according to Tes. Employees reportedly begin work around 11 p.m. or midnight to prepare doughnuts for the following day.
Tes said he decided to be open about the problem rather than quietly cut back or close. “I kind of had to humble myself and ask for help from the community, ask for help from God,” he said.
The shop’s social-media message described the payroll problem as the first such failure in a long time and said the financial strain had accumulated over several weeks.
How did customers respond?
Customers came to The Local Donut in large numbers the day after Tes’s appeal. Other local businesses also bought orders in advance so they could distribute the doughnuts to customers.
Tes said the support gave the shop enough business to make payroll. He later described the people who helped as generous and selfless and said he wanted to pay that support forward.
The reports do not provide the amount of payroll at risk, the number of employees affected, the value of the prepaid orders or the shop’s sales during the response. They also do not establish whether the business’s financial problems have ended.
Why does payroll matter so much to a small business?
Payroll is a regular obligation. A shop must have enough cash on hand to pay employees even when sales have recently slowed or expenses have risen.
That makes a weak season especially difficult for a small food business. Doughnut shops must buy ingredients and supplies, pay workers who prepare products overnight and keep operating before they know how much customers will buy that day. A short-term increase in sales can provide immediate cash, but it does not by itself show that a business has become profitable or financially stable.
In The Local Donut’s case, the community response appears to have acted as a quick boost in sales rather than a formal investment, loan or ownership transaction. No formal fundraising campaign or ownership change was identified in the supplied reporting.
What is known — and what is not?
Tes’s account establishes that the shop faced a severe cash shortage, that he asked for help and that the response helped him make payroll. The account does not include financial records that independently verify the payroll amount or the shop’s overall financial condition.
The reports also do not identify all of the businesses that prepaid orders, say how many people responded or show whether the higher customer traffic continued after the following day.
For now, the story is less about a measured financial turnaround than about an emergency sales response: A local business disclosed that it could not meet a basic obligation, and customers and neighboring businesses quickly bought from it to help keep workers paid.
