Today we’d like to introduce you to Maria Moore Riggs.
The founder of Revolution Doughnuts, Maria, fell in love with farm-to-table comfort food during her college years working in the kitchen at Emandal Farm, a small laid-back resort in northern California known for delicious family-style meals made with ingredients sourced from its farm and two-acre organic garden. This experience ignited her passion for making and sharing delicious, high-quality food and she has been baking ever since.
In 2003 Maria was living in San Francisco attending graduate school studying to become a Psychotherapist. During this time she also continued her culinary education with 4 am shifts at a local bakery where she learned to make traditional croissant and other laminated pastries.
In 2008 Maria moved to Georgia with her family (her husband Joel and one-year-old son Rocket). Since her psychotherapy license didn’t transfer across state lines she filled her days baking special occasion cakes for her neighbors and scones and cookies for some local coffee shops.
In 2009 she opened her first brick and mortar cafe the Sweet Auburn Market (aka Atlanta’s Municipal Market) with some friends/business partners from the south Georgia coffee roasting company Cafe Campesino. While the coffee shop was not a success and closed after a year and a half, Maria continued to refine her vision for the bakery of her dreams while selling her baked treats at Atlanta area farmers markets.
While at the markets, she developed a following for her fresh doughnuts, this gave birth to her dream of opening a shop dedicated to revitalizing the American doughnut. Her vision was to help restore the doughnut to its former glory as a simple, tasty, hand-crafted treat made from scratch instead of from commercially available factory-made mixes.
Maria found a vacant restaurant space in a neighborhood near her home – she signed a lease, drained her retirement account and ran a successful Kickstarter campaign that brought in over $10,000 to help her open the first Revolution Doughnuts in Decatur, Georgia on National Doughnut Day 2012. On the heels of success, she opened a second store in the Inman Park neighborhood of Atlanta in 2017.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Maria encountered many obstacles and challenges along the way to opening her business: being a new mom with a breastfeeding baby, rebuilding her community after a moving from CA to GA, lack of money, lack of business skills, confusing and contradictory state/city rules and regulations, unreliable contractors, unreasonable landlords, difficult employees, broken equipment, recipe fails, etc.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Revolution Doughnuts – what should we know?
The mission of Revolution Doughnuts is to spread joy, inspire smiles, and enrich the lives around us with simple moments of delight. We do this by making delicious doughnuts and giving great service. By doing this we add value to the community and in turn, provide meaningful work and a stable living wage for those who work in the business.
The word “Revolution” in our name refers to our dedication to hand-crafted food – to food made by people, not machines. We make all our doughs, glazes and fillings from scratch and use real food ingredients in our recipes: organic flour, local dairy, fresh fruit, natural flavor extracts, and 100% trans-fat free vegetable oil.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
I have had many great cooks to who encouraged me in my interest in cooking from a young age – several of my family members made delicious foods from scratch and took the time to teach me how to measure and taste. My grandmother, who grew up making bread every week for her family on a wood burning stove, could make perfect loaves of bread without using any measuring equipment and helped me make my first loaves when I was 10. My great-uncle taught me to make jam, churn butter and form pie crusts. My dad taught me how to make our secret family recipe sour cream waffles, folding in whipped egg whites and heating the waffle iron just so.
I’ve had some amazing lady-chef mentors too. Tam Adams, a self-trained cook, who made gorgeous family-style meals using fresh ingredients from her garden, for 80 people every night at her resort. Shannon Stapel, a CIA trained chef and my boss at the bakery in Fairfax CA, showed me how to make croissants from scratch and how to get up at 3 am every day to get it done with a smile on her face!
Lots of folks have given me business ideas and been tremendous supporters along the way – staff members who have innovated new more efficient ways to make doughnuts and serve customers; loyal customers who supported my Kickstarter campaign and who always take time to give me feedback on the shop, staff and doughnut flavors; family members and friends who have chipped in during busy times to fix equipment, fold boxes, glaze doughnuts, make coffee, wipe tables or run the register – couldn’t have done it without them!
Pricing:
- coffee, tea, and espresso drinks – $2.50 – 5.00
- doughnuts – $2.25 – $4.50
- mini doughnuts, doughnut cakes, and dozen boxes – $9.00 – 23.00
Contact Info:
- Address: 908 West College Ave, Decatur GA (Decatur Shop)
745 Edgewood Ave NE, Atlanta, GA (Inman Park Shop) - Website: revolutiondoughnuts.com
- Phone: 470-428-2023
- Email: info@revolutiondoughnuts.com
- Instagram: revolutiondoughnuts
- Facebook: revolutiondoughnuts
- Twitter: revolutiondonut
- Yelp: revolutiondoughnuts/decatur
- Other: revolutiondoughnuts/atlanta
Image Credit:
Carmen K. Sisson, Pamela Berger, Whitney Ott
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