When John Adi Flores created his dona pupusa, a unique pupusa made with donut flour, in 2019, he was harshly criticized for his audacity to break with the traditional recipe that dictates that pupusas are made with corn or rice flour.
“Which one did you smoke for you to have invented this, they even told me, and they mistreated me,” recalls John Adi.
But it didn’t take a year before word began to spread about his donuts pupusas and his Salvadoran countrymen who used to criticize him became his main customers.
John Adi says that no one else in the world makes the donut pupusa, so his recipe has already become a registered trademark of his coffee and donut shop Winstar Donuts.
The story of the pupusa donut was born after John Adi opened the doors of his business Winstar Donuts in the town of Lynwood.
But first let’s see who John Adi is. He was born in the north of El Salvador, and his mother Apolonia Hércules brought him to this country when he was 14 years old. He grew up in south-central Los Angeles and sold phones for 30 years.
“When it stopped being profitable and many companies began to close, I went to work at a bank.”
But within himself, John Adi always kept the idea of having a restaurant, and since he was a regular customer of coffee and donuts in the morning, he thought of a coffee and donut business.
“I was even more convinced when I read that Americans eat an average of 33 donuts per year.”
John Adi says that he spent three years planning his business.
“I began to study and investigate coffee, milk and flour”. And at first he – he admits – that they didn’t come out very good, but he found the point in flavor.
“In 2019 we opened Winstar Donuts in the city of Lynwood, next to Plaza México. We started with 6 employees and offering around 15 different types of donuts.”
His first customers – he says – were his neighbors.
Soon after, her vegan customers, ranging in age from 13 to 28, started asking for vegan donuts, and it didn’t take long for her to oblige and include them on her menu.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, John Adi was already doing very well with his donuts, but like all businesses, covid-19 put him in trouble. “We opened and closed. Almost everything was take out. The hardest part was running out of employees.”
Four years after opening his donut business, he says it’s already profitable. “Nine families live here, including mine.”
And he considers that the key for the customer to return is to offer a product that tastes good, goes down well in the stomach and has a good price.
“Today we offer about 30 types of donuts. The ones that sell the most are the glazed ones, the traditional sugar one, the chocolate one, and the coconut one.”
Of the vegan ones, they offer about 16 types, and they also incorporated Mexican sweet bread into their menu, such as cocoa and vanilla shells, bolillo bread, and about ten different types of sandwiches. Without missing coffee, sodas and natural juices.
“The coffee is a blend of beans from Guatemala, El Salvador and Colombia.”
The pupusa donut is a story that is cooking apart, since it was born from John Adi’s purpose of offering something unique.
“One day I was taking a bath thinking that I wanted to do something different, something that would mix Salvadoran and Anglo-Saxon culture.”
Then the donut pupusa came to mind, which is nothing more than a pupusa with the wheat flour with which the donut is made. “It came to me early in the business, but I couldn’t give it that authentic flavor. I was encouraged to put them up for sale up to a year later, and it still took me about 7 months to get it right.
It was his mother who came to his rescue to give that touch that the donuts pupusas needed. “To date my mother prepares the cheese with the loroco, the beans and the chicharrón that the pupusa donuts carry.”
Currently, it has three types of pupusa donuts: cheese, with jalapeños and loroco; beans with cheese and loroco; and the bean with cheese, loroco and chicharrón. The latter is the most requested, says John Adi, who confesses that he is very happy with the results.
And he reveals that his goal is to grow his donut business, because if his mother taught him anything, it is not to give up. Doña Apolonia is going to turn 80, and she says that she could not be more proud of her son.
“I’d like to have about 200 all over Los Angeles and franchise WinStar,” adds John Adi.
The name of Winstar Donuts He says that he thought about it a lot and chose it because win means to win in Spanish, and star means star.
“It’s just that every day, I wake up with the idea of shining and being the best donut boy. And for that a donut and a coffee are going to be used, ”he says smiling.
The store Winstar Donuts, home of the pupusa donut, it is located at 11326 Long Beach Blvd. Lynwood, California, 90262
They open from 5 in the morning to 8 at night, every day.