Coffee & Doughnuts: North Fork Doughnut Company, Sail Away

Sheltering from the chaos ensuing outside of my front door, coffee and food have become my new favorite antisocial activities. While everyone else is stocking up on toilet paper and hand sanitizer, I’m making my way for the 30 oz coffee grinds and packets of chocolate. We all have our pandemic priorities. It turns out, I’m not the only one.

The last week of March, North Fork Doughnut Company (NoFoDoCo) and Sail Away Coffee delivered roughly 4000 doughnuts to 535 locations across Long Island and the five boroughs of New York City. “Doing collaborations with other like-minded small businesses has always been a favorite past-time of the NoFoDoCo, and Sail Away happens to be one of our favorites to work with,” said doughnut shop co-owner, Jimmy Lyons.

Now, as small businesses are taking a hit during the worldwide coronavirus crisis, working together is a means for survival. While the two companies have been collaborating since NoFoDoCo opened its doors two years ago in Mattituck, co-owners Lyons, Kelly Briguccia, and head of social media, Rachel Herbst, collectively devised a new delivery system, bringing product directly to their customers’ doors. Nitro-brewed coffee and freshly made doughnuts, a symbiotically sweet pairing, can be home delivered every Friday, between 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For the North Fork-based shop, it’s a new way of doing business. Even during COVID-19, the shop is continuously selling out from its brick-and-mortar location thanks to window and curbside pickups. But Sail Away has been making the wide-range drop-offs for a while. Using the coffee company’s existing customer base now allows NoFoDoCo to reach a new audience.

“We don’t think our doughnuts should be a treat that only a few can enjoy. We love the current exclusivity of our offerings, but we want the world to know about what we are doing out here. We want to represent Long Island and let the city folk know that we aren’t messing around,” Lyons said. “Not to mention, there are plenty of people out west that could probably use some doughnuts and coffee delivered to their door during these times and we wanted to push ourselves to make that happen for everyone.”

Each morning, NoFoDoCo bakes a fresh batch of doughnuts and Sail Away takes it from there, handling all internal distribution and routing. All customers need to do is order through Sail Away’s online shop at sailawaycoffee.com and choose from one of three options: six pack of Nitro and half-dozen doughnuts, six pack Nitro and one dozen doughnuts, or a 12-pack Nitro and one dozen doughnuts.

The Nitro Cold Brew comes in an assortment of Unsweet, Sweet, Sea Salt and Caramel, and Horchata. Doughnut choices includes glaze, black raspberry jelly, Boston, black forest, vanilla sprinkles, and blueberry crumb, with flavors rotating on a weekly basis.

All priced between $55 to $89. Then, Friday morning an email will alert you that the order is out for delivery, which includes a tracking link. (If you run out of things to watch on Netflix, hitting the refresh button on your tracker will turn into a new form of entertainment.)

The deliveries began as a way to abide by CDC social distancing regulations, with the extra perk of ensuring job security to employees, which means rents get paid, and life resumes as normal as possible.

At the moment, the delicious combination remains “limited availability,” but both companies are seeing exponential growth in orders, already seeing a potential need to set a cap on order capacity. Lyons noted that what started off an idea for the short term, depending on demand, could continue long after the pandemic ends.

“We are nothing without our community. We all need each other more than ever. This experience, while scary and trying, has been wildly eye opening. It has been humbling to see our community and our small businesses band together to lift each other up. The support and the efforts have been astonishing. It’s unfortunate, but sometimes it takes situations like this to make us realize how much we all need each other and how important it is to appreciate what you have. Our community has helped us realize this truth and we hope we have given the same back,” Lyons said.

Special flavors are planned for Easter weekend, which will be announced online. Visit www.wnofodoco.com, follow them on social media @nofodoco and place all of your orders before they sell out at sailawaycoffee.com.

nicole@indyeastend.com