♪ Cambodian music ♪ (Uncle Sam) Well, when I came here in 1994 to eat one donut you didn't realize how much work goes into one donut until you actually go into doing the donuts. You know, it takes quite a bit just to make one donut. I start off by finding a location. If I find a location, I get a family that needs a donut shop to go to look at the location, and if they like it, we negotiate the price, and if the price is right, I build it for them and turn them the key. You know, most of them already know how to make donuts. They work for a family member, you know, they've already worked for like two, three or five years... to save up the money to start up the business. (Chandara Meas) When I came to the States, I don't have no relatives in here, so I don't speak that much English, so I gotta start to learn English and start to work to support myself... and I don't have chance to go back to college, so I ended up at a donut shop right now. Most Cambodians who take us, they own a donut shop, they run a donut business... Yeah, you know, it's hard to do it, not many people want to do that job as I'm doing right now. From 1975 to 1979, there's the Khmer Rouge ran by Pol Pot. At that time I was 10 years old, I still remember when they tortured... a lot of people dying by starving and sickness... most of them were killing people. That was a hard time and that was the worst thing that happened in the world. Most Cambodians escaped from the war in 1981after the Khmer Rouge regime, and when they started to come here, people don't speak that much English, so that's why they started working at donut shops because most of them what they do are family business -- This is my wife's nephew. He just came to the United States last year. He came in a special case they call "Lottery Visa". He's a lucky one that won a lottery green card. The business we just opened-- it is kind of slow, it's brand new. Hopefully, we can own it for a long time until we get... you know, some profit... to take care of my family, my kid... go to school, go to college... I have a beautiful kid. It's like, if you work for a company, you have a different schedule than the donut people. The donut people, we wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, and we'll be done by 12:00 or 1:00 o'clock and take a couple-of-hours-nap and, you know, get together and then, go to sleep, and wake up, and go to make some more donuts! (man singing Karaoke in Cambodian) (end of singing) Yeah, we like to get together because, you know, we work seven days a week. You know, some wake up at one, some of us wake up at two, some of us at three... and we work seven days a week, you know, this is the only fun that we have. ♪ Cambodian music ♪ I would say 95% of the donut shops in Texas, not just in Houston, in Texas is Cambodian-people-owned. One one-big -family, that's all. ♪ Cambodian music ♪ My parents bought the store in 1994. They would always bring us on weekends because we have school on weekdays. I really dread waking up on the weekend just to come make donut, you know. They told me one day I'm going to own my business, and I kind of say I didn't want to do this. This is not my first choice of what I really wanted to do. For me, I thought going to school was what I really wanted to do, I wanted to experience that life. One day I woke up and I realized I didn't wanna work for somebody else. I called my mom and I told her I wanted to come back home... and try this again, and she was very excited, very happy for me that I can kind of woke up and I wanted to do this. I get up at four o'clock, and my sisters, they get up at about 2:00-2:30, they're closer to the plant so they wake up earlier, to go to the plant and-- I'm fortunate to have a little bit of both, so I can stay in bed a little longer and they can-- So when I first got to Houston I didn't know-- I thought my family was the only one that's doing donuts. I come to find out a lot of Cambodian people have done this way before we have... You know, it's like a community of helping out each other, you know, like, people were telling each other what can make you successful and I don't think anybody was envious of each other, they just wanted to see our culture succeed, and the donut business is where it started for a lot of these Cambodian cultures. It's definitely a dream that a lot of people wanted when they are in Cambodia, to have their own place. Back in Cambodia, it's a fast, fast-pace life. Every day is a struggle to find, you know, money and food for the family. It made me realized what I have out here in America. As hard as I think I work down here, I think that they work harder over there to make a smaller living. My first place when I came, I learned in the one Donald's Donut on el Dorado in Webster. And then I breached it out to a Yankee Doodle Donuts. And then, that's when I met David on the El Dorado store. I was teaching him since he was young. I taught him probably about five years, I believe. (David Buehrer) My name is David Buehrer and this is Morningstar. (Uncle Sam) Most of the time I don't ask for help but, you know-- It surprises me it came up from David just to ask me to get into a business partnership with him. (David B.) This is the first thing I'd learned with-- when I was in high school was how to roll kolaches and Sam's family they would let me roll a kolache and they would immediately unroll the kolache, and then they would roll it again to make sure it was perfect. And for like the first three or four months of me working there they never served any of my kolaches. (chuckles) One day they just saw one of them and decided it was okay, and from then on, they let me roll kolaches for them. But it took like months before they even serve one of the kolaches that I rolled. It shows the attention to details, a level of quality, and maybe, I just needed to learn more. But it took months to learn how to roll the kolaches right. (David B.) One of the things we wanted to do with Morningtar is bring in the technique that we learned from the Cambodian donut shops and apply it to the foodie nature that specialty copy exists in. We have a lot of bartenders, and chefs, and sommelier friends, and a lot of our donuts are inspired by them. Yeah, at one point in high school I was driving an hour at two in the morning to go and learn how to make donuts in Magnolia, Texas, with Sam. And then, an hour back, and then go to school by 7:30... but, you know, you do what you gotta do to learn. (Uncle Sam) In the nineties, you know, that's when the donuts started here in Houston by the Cambodian community, and to now is a long time to me, like... we feel like, it needs change, it needs some time to change, you know. (Uncle Sam) And then, all of a sudden one day, he said-- he calls me pou --which is Cambodian like, uncle-- and he said, "Would you like to do a donut shop and a coffee together?" I said, "Sure", you know, I never expected it. In the future, the new generations they know that I own this store and they want to do something like this. I don't want to do the same thing every day. Especially, when doing it for almost 20 years. You're doing the same thing every day, and to me, I wouldn't want to go back and do the same shop like a mom-and-pop shop. This is the shop that I want to do as the next one... and the next one, and the next one... People have no idea what go into a single donut here. English subtitles by Jenny Lam-Chowdhury