Groovy Donuts

With locations in East Lansing and Williamston, Groovy Donuts has built a reputation over the past decade for its delectable pastries and retro branding, with unique standards like the Elvis (a chocolate, peanut butter and banana Bismark) and novel specialty donuts like the Salted Caramel Old-Fashioned, Fluffer Nutter, and Blackberry Crisp Fritter.

Owners and Michigan State University alumni Andrew and Monica Gauthier have been recognized with multiple awards for their business, including Small Business Development Center Capitol Region Best Small Business at the 2023 Michigan Celebrates Small Business gala and a Greater Lansing Entrepreneur of the Year award. They celebrated 10 years in business in September 2025, thanks in part to support from the Lansing Economic Area Partnership’s TREK Small Business Support Hub, part of a statewide network of Small Business Support Hubs supported by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

Monica and Andrew shared their perspective on the benefits of the Support Hub for mentorship, learning, and building a community of like-minded business owners.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How has the Small Business Support Hub helped Groovy Donuts?

Monica: Personally, I used the Women's Entrepreneurial Fellowship, a nine-month program* that was outstanding. It seemed intimidating, but it was worth it. We had incredible people talking about things like process, how to gain funding for your programs, use your energy and focus better, and find your team’s strengths. I was also with a mentor, and she's going to continue mentoring me even after the program. It was a lot of value and helped me know how to use my energy to make our business more effective.

Andrew: We've also participated in other aspects of the Support Hub. There are several courses they offer. We participated in the ‘Anatomy of a Brand’ course over three weeks. There was some homework involved, but it was very well worth the time. There was a processes course, to make sure things are done consistently. We also applied for the grant program. These all have a lot of value for small businesses, no matter what stage you're in.

Monica: We have gotten a lot of positive feedback from our employees and our customers. We had pretty good processes in place, but we can always improve. Recently, we had to upend what we were doing in the kitchen and change things pretty dramatically. My employee said, ‘I trust in Groovy Donuts,’ which is quite the compliment. Every day, operations are smoother with the things that we've learned.

One of the things in the fellowship was personal branding. I am now on LinkedIn, and that's new to me. It’s generated a lot of sparks and a lot of energy in that world. People are walking in the door saying, ‘Hey, I'm here because I saw you were doing this cool thing on LinkedIn.’

Andrew: We’re trying to hit all the different parts of the Lansing area. People would like us to have a location all over town. Of course, it’s quite expensive to build out a new store. We try to hit as much of this area as possible without adding locations. We've added some delivery services. We're starting to lean into catering and hoping that we can expand our reach without dramatically adding to our capital investment. Frankly, we don't have the money to do it and want to stay away from too much debt financing if we can.

Monica: The Support Hub – all those mentors and teachers and people have come here out of their way to support us. Just the other day, Jane from Jungle Jane’s came here after we had a power outage and made a post saying, ‘Come support Groovy Donuts after they had two days of closure.’ I would have never gotten to know her without this program.

Andrew: One of the underrated parts of the Support Hub is having a community of small business owners that understand what you're going through. It's a very unique thing. There are a lot of things we've tried to figure out, and we've spun our wheels, and then realized we should ask somebody for help. Most people are willing to.

It's the best thing anyone could do, even if it feels like you don't have enough time or energy.

You have some fun flavors, and even letter-shaped donuts. How do you come up with your donut flavors and ideas?

Andrew: I think a lot of the stuff we do has come from customers making a request that we had never seen or heard of before. We just try to figure out how to make it happen for them. 

Monica: We're like, ‘Hmm, we could maybe do that!’

Andrew: We're not good at saying no, but it’s led to a lot of really cool things. We got a request for somebody's birthday within a few months of opening in 2015. Those first letter donuts, I didn't realize you could buy cookie cutters that were big enough for donuts, so I hand-cut them with dough cutters.

Monica: We have photos of the first hand-cut letters, and they're all different shapes and sizes, and the customers said, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen.’ I think we feed off of that. We started the donut design contest in 2018 for our anniversary. The ideas we get from our customers are wild and crazy, and we can feature it, and then we give them a bunch of stuff for free for the idea.

In 2020 we had, how many?

Andrew: Oh, we had hundreds!

Monica: Hundreds of submissions. People were just dying to be part of a community. You get little drawings, you get little videos of them talking about it. It’s really cool.

We are humble enough to know that we don't know everything, and that's why we took advantage of this program, that's why we listen to our customers, that's why we listen to our staff. The things we hear, we think about and see if we can do it. And that's where we come up with some of that stuff. 

Andrew: I think our approach is that it’s not a matter of if we do it, if it's a good idea. It's just a matter of when.

Get your business in the groove with help from your local Small Business Support Hub.

* The Women’s Entrepreneurial Fellowship, while not part of the TREK Small Business Support Hub, is funded by the Small Business Support Hub grant program from the SBAM Foundation in partnership with the MEDC.