Every Monday at 3 p.m, online ordering opens up for Kora, a Filipino microbakery based in New York City. It’s been almost a year since cofounder Kimberly Camara started selling her doughnuts, and while production has increased from 100 doughnuts a week to 1,000 doughnuts, they still sell out in under a minute.
Camara and Kevin Borja (Kora cofounder and Camara’s boyfriend) call themselves accidental entrepreneurs. Like many others in the hospitality industry, Camara and Borja were laid off from their restaurant jobs during the coronavirus pandemic. With extra time on her hands, Camara baked as a creative outlet and on one fateful day decided to fry up some brioche dough.
“During quarantine I was doing a lot of baking, and I had this leftover brioche in my freezer,” Camara told me. She was staying at her parents’ place at the time and had planned on baking the brioche into a loaf of bread but saw that the oven was filled with pots and pans. Rather than clear out the oven, she decided to fry them like doughnuts over the stove, filling them with ube (purple yam) pastry cream she had from a cake she made for a friend a few days prior.
The resulting doughnuts were so good that it prompted Camara to post a picture of them on her Instagram feed and sell them on a casual basis after just one day of testing. The lineup included four flavors: buko pandan, ube, leche flan (made using Camara’s grandmother’s recipe) and halo-halo. At the time, Camara thought that making these doughnuts featuring iconic Filipino flavors would be a seasonal project that she’d only do for a month or so.
Camara’s Instagram following wasn’t anywhere near the 13K+ it is now, but she had long used her profile as a portfolio of sorts for the food she made. When she started selling her doughnuts through a Google Form linked on her Instagram, it immediately caught the attention of her loyal following and grew organically. At the beginning, Camara made doughnuts in small batches in her Queens apartment (using every available surface to proof doughnuts) and Borja helped deliver them.
Kimberly Camara and Kevin Borja, cofounders of Kora
Credit: Kenneth Camara @kenscamara
Just a few weeks later, Camara got a call from the New York Times for a potential feature on their business. She turned them down, unsure if their budding business (which was still being run through her personal Instagram) was ready to be exposed to a large potential audience. A few weeks later, Eater reached out with a similar request, and this time Camara and Borja agreed to an interview, meanwhile working quickly to officially establish Kora with a website and its own Instagram account. The Eater article came out in early September and the rest, as they say, was history. (Camara did finally agree to that New York Times interview, by the way).
“It was a combination of a lot of talent, good will, love, family and free time,” Borja said. Camara’s brother Ken is their photographer, her cousin Rob handled their social media at the beginning, and her best friend Jenny designed their logo and helped create their branding. Camara’s mom comes in on production days to help glaze the doughnuts.
Working in small New York City kitchens and a job at a large catering hall made Camara uniquely prepared for making hundreds of doughnuts out of her apartment. She made around 100 doughnuts that first week, and before moving operations to a shared commissary kitchen in Long Island City just a few months ago Camara and her small team were making 500 doughnuts a week in her Queens apartment. Now that they’re in a commercial kitchen and using professional equipment, they’re able to make around 1,000 doughnuts a week and distribute them over two days (Thursdays and Fridays) instead of just one (Fridays).
In terms of meeting demand, Camara notes that a year in, they aren’t there yet—and won’t be there until they can produce enough doughnuts to sell them on a daily basis. Even though they’re making double the amount of doughnuts that they made from Camara’s apartment, their sellout window continues to be under a minute. On prep days, where the bulk of the work is done (making dough, fillings and garnishes), the team consists of just three people: Camara, Borja and a third chef who was their first hire. Their model of opening orders on Monday was implemented for logistical reasons (to give the Kora team enough time to shop for ingredients, prep and produce the doughnuts), and it ended up being one of the key factors that made their popularity skyrocket.
Filipino-inspired doughnuts
Credit: Kenneth Camara @kenscamara
As Kora has grown, and their clientele has expanded beyond friends, family and the Filipino community, it has become about more than just doughnuts. One of Kora’s most popular flavors has been, to Camara’s great surprise, itlog na pula (salted egg). “Every time I put out a new flavor I get a little nervous about how people will react,” she said. The sweet and salty combination was an instant hit, and she notes that it’s one of the top flavors fans ask to bring back into their five doughnut set with weekly-changing flavors.
“That’s the goal; part of our mission statement is exploring the richness of these Filipino flavors through hospitality and our family recipes,” Borja said. “We want to share these flavors through the recognizable and approachable vessel of a doughnut.” Camara added that each of their flavors is thoughtfully prepared and complex, and has a story behind it. “Every single doughnut we make is not only there to evoke nostalgia, but it’s also there to teach others that have never had these flavors about them,” she said.
In her DMs, Camara recently chatted with a customer about their champorado (chocolate porridge) doughnut. The customer was curious about the small cup that came with the doughnut. Camara explained that the cup was filled with salted condensed milk; a nod to the practice of pouring condensed milk over the sweet porridge before eating it, with a salty bite from dried fish. “They were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that, that’s so cool!’” Camara said. “That’s the most exciting thing, teaching people about these flavor profiles that they may not have encountered in the past.”
A brick and mortar location and having their doughnuts readily available for people to purchase without reserving them beforehand is the goal for the Kora team, but there’s still some scaling up that needs to be done before that dream is a reality. In the meantime, you’ll want to set an alarm on Mondays for your best chance of snagging a box of their popular Filipino-inspired doughnuts.