A sweet escape from a deep hole 🍩

Good morning! Today is Saturday, May 30, 2026. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C.

by Kay West

Mithoon Patel, a certified sommelier who spent well over a decade working front of house in Capital Grille steakhouses in Scottsdale and Phoenix, Ariz.; Denver, Colo.; and uptown Charlotte, remembers the exact moment his career trajectory took a self-propelled detour from wine tasting and fine dining to donut testing and food trucking.

“My mom was visiting from India, and my wife and I took her to the Charlotte Farmers Market,” he said. “There was a gentleman under a tent cranking out these little donuts. My wife bought a bag. They were greasy and gross, and you got powdered sugar all over your hands when you reached into the bag. I told her they were awful.”

His wife, Lindsey, called Mithoon out on his “bougie” taste in food and asked if he thought he could do better. “I told her, ‘Absolutely,’ and she said, ‘Well, go for it then,’” he said.

That night — two bottles in — he was scrolling through online auction sites and placed a bid on a truck. The next (somewhat foggy) morning, he received an email letting him know he was the owner of a hollowed-out former Frito-Lay delivery truck. “My only saving grace was that I got it for less than $2,000,” he said.

On Aug. 19, 2019, at an event in Concord, he sold the first order of gluten-free mini-donuts from the window of the newly refurbished Donut I Love U food truck. Thanks to friends showing up, he was able to cover the $50 entry fee.

He had cashed out his 401(k) to finance the venture — $10,000 for the truck build-out, plus equipment and product purchase. The catchy name began as a punny question between husband and wife — Donut I love you? — and his father, a graphic designer, created the cheerful branding.

Patel said he knew from the get-go his donuts would be gluten-free, even though celiac doesn’t affect him personally.

“When I learned there was a niche of people who couldn’t enjoy a simple thing like donuts, I embarked on a mission to make good gluten-free donuts,” he said.

His debut menu has remained remarkably consistent; all the choices are built on three hot-from-the-fryer mini-donuts on a plate. The most basic is topped with white powdered sugar, more bedazzled are the Chocolate Covered Salty and the American Pie, and the most popular has always been Strawberry & Cream, with sliced strawberries and freshly made vanilla whipped cream.

Building a following was a challenge, but when Covid shut restaurant doors, it opened food truck windows, and the business took off. So much so that they invested in another truck, extended their driving range to South Carolina, Atlanta and Virginia, and were out seven days a week during the busy season.

A couple of years in, they decided to heed their customers’ consistent pleas for a stable address, and after missing out on a place by the Truist Field ballpark, came across a small, cinderblock building in NoDa. “It was super cute, and we thought it was a great spot for Donut I Love U, so we called the Realtor,” Patel recalls.

On Aug. 22, 2023, they posted a photo of the empty interior of Donut’s future home with the caption: “The Uptown location didn't work but we found a new spot in NoDa…hopefully open by the end of the year!!!”

It took until January 2024 to get the lease signed on the 704-sq.-ft. building on a tip of property where Whiting Avenue and East 35th Street meet in a quiet residential pocket of NoDa. He secured a $240,000 loan from Carolina Small Business Development Fund (CSBDF), intended to cover renovating and upfitting the building, new equipment, furnishings, opening products and materials, opening costs and more.

He budgeted $80,000 for the structural buildout and, from a list of CSBDF-approved vendors, selected a contractor he felt confident in with a timeline that would have the shop open by June 2024, then turned his attention back to the two trucks and purchasing equipment. (Lindsey, co-owner and chief operating officer of the business, continued to work full-time in the insurance industry.)

Over the next almost two years, with two different contractors, the building was left in worse shape than they received it.

Patel fired the first contractor one year in, found and hired a second, again budgeting for $80,000 and a 45-day finish date. That led to multiple failed inspections, Patel said, each of which required a substantial fee to the city. Making loan payments for a business that didn’t exist and paying rent on a building that wasn’t open, Patel hired a third contractor to finish the buildout. He was also forced to take out private loans to move forward from each step backward.

“It was a slow bleed,” Lindsey said. “We’d get one thing taken care of, and something else would happen. We’d think, ‘What else could possibly go wrong?’ and then we’d find out. You trust the person you’re hiring to do the job you hire them to do, and they don’t. But we felt like we were so far in, we had to keep going.”

On March 28, 2026, they posted on their Instagram page: “Two years. $386K into an $80K build. Tomorrow, we open. Soft Launch Sunday 3/29. 7am to 8pm. Bring the family. Bring the pups. We can’t wait to finally open these doors for this community.”

The community did not disappoint. At 7:15 a.m., a family came in for donuts. Then another, and another and another. Patel says the next time he looked up, there was a line out the door and down the block. By noon, they were out of strawberries and cream and had to close for 30 minutes to restock. Lindsey said there were tears of relief and gratitude on the couple’s drive home that night.

They have expanded the menu with a donut sundae and hot and cold beverages. Patel says weekdays are slower than he hoped, but weekends are jammed, and history suggests the couple doesn’t give up.

“We love the people here in NoDa,” Mithoon said. “We already know our neighbors and their dogs. We don’t have funds now to provide seating inside, but we have picnic tables out front. We want to be a gathering place. It was so hard to get here, but people showed up, and we are so thankful.”

Kay West has been a writer and journalist over a decades-long career in multiple cities, and a Charlottean since 2025. She is grateful to have arrived before the city reached capacity. She can be reached at [email protected]

Today's supporting sponsor is Atrium Health. Atrium Health, part of Advocate Health. is redefining care for all by delivering nationally recognized specialty and virtual care for patients in over 1,000 care locations across seven states.

Ledger editors convened over Zoom yesterday for a live Reporters’ Roundtable session to recap and discuss all of the major news and happenings in Charlotte over the past month. From the mayor’s resignation to the I-77 toll lane project cancellation to the ongoing drought — needless to say, May was a busy month in the Queen City.

In case you missed it, you can tune into the 35-minute roundtable discussion on YouTube or listen on The Charlotte Ledger Podcast, wherever you typically stream your podcasts, at the links below.

Stay tuned for more Reporters’ Roundtables in the future. We’ll share the days and times in our regular Ledger newsletters, and send you a reminder an hour or so before they begin.

On Saturdays, The Ledger sifts through the local news of the week and links to the top articles — even if they appeared somewhere else. We’ll help you get caught up. That’s what Saturdays are for.

Wednesday (🔒)

Friday (🔒)

Charlotte in Motion

Fútbol Friday

Real Estate Whispers (🔒)