GREENFIELD — When Ken Watkin heard there was a new doughnut shop opening in Greenfield, he raced over to the store’s location to find it still under construction.
Jack’s Donuts’ owner Ron Youngclaus remembers chatting with Watkin while working on the storefront’s build out, and he’d asked him to come inside and lend him a hand with some of the handyman work. Watkin happily obliged. Little did Watkin know then that he’d become the store’s general manager half a decade later.
Jack’s Donuts of Greenfield celebrated its five-year anniversary last weekend, and owners Ron and Shawn Youngclaus announced they are stepping aside for retirement. They’ve elected to promote Watkin to general manager, leaving the franchise in the capable hands of its very first employee, they said.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
Youngclaus recalled how a few days after recruiting Watkin to help out with the building process, the man had remarked that he wouldn’t mind working for him full time.
Youngclaus sadly had to turn him down at first, he said.
“I told him he couldn’t because he had this great big cookie duster, and we had a clean-shaved policy,” Youngclaus said. “He said he had a mustache his whole life and his wife never saw him without one.”
Refusing to get discouraged, Watkin showed up to help the very next day with his whiskers removed. After working for a while with no comment from Youngclaus, Watkin finally spoke up.
“You didn’t even notice,” Watkin said.
“Notice what,” Youngclaus replied.
“He said, ‘Look, I shaved off my cookie duster,’” Youngclaus remembered with a chuckle. “He was the first employee we hired.”
Looking back on Jack’s Donuts’ success over the past five years, Youngclaus said it wasn’t easy. Opening a new business is always a struggle with many risks and variables. So he and his wife made sure to involve themselves in the day-to-day operations of the store from the start, and they always made sure of three things, he said.
“Make fantastic handmade donuts, have great employees and keep the place spotless,” Youngclaus said. “I figured by doing that, we should be able to solve most of our problems.”
Making sure people always leave the doughnut shop with a smile on their face was always top priority, he added. That’s the heart and soul of Jack’s, and Watkin has proven time and again that he’s done a great job in achieving their mission.
“You’ve got to be willing to get out there and do something,” Youngclaus said of being a business owner in a close-knit community like Greenfield. “You’ve got to meet people and treat them like family. That’s what it boils down to.”
Watkin said he’s glad to have stayed around after helping his boss with fixing the place up all those years ago. A Greenfield resident since he was 5 years old, Watkin said he lives in the same house he grew up in.
Watkin said he couldn’t ask for a better calling than to work in a place that allows him to serve the people of a community that he loves. He knows the faces of hundreds of customers and even occasionally meets old friends he knew in school more than 20 years ago.
“That’s what allows us to eat dinner every night of every week,” Watkin said. “Our community is what keeps us alive. So we’ve got to be part of it.”
While the Youngclaus family will still remain owners, Watkin will run the store as the general manger alongside co-manager Linda Holmes. Holmes also possesses an outstanding work ethic that creates a great environment for employees and customers alike, Shawn Youngclaus said.
Watkin said he plans on ensuring Jack’s is the same place Ron and Shawn Youngclaus always wanted it to be. Doughnut shops are supposed to make people happy, he said.
“Some people, they come in in the morning a little grumpy maybe,” Watkin said. “But they wipe it out of their eye and they leave with a smile and their doughnut. What better living could you make?”
