Red Donut opens third shop in Wallburg

{Customers lounge in the new Red Donut Shop in Wallburg on opening night while one young customer on the right plays a race car simulator game. Contributed photo}

Red Donut Shop, which opened for business in a small space on East First Street in uptown Lexington in October 2015, has opened its third Davidson County location in Wallburg.

The business has been growing since it was started by Saro Vay and his brothers, David, Vonnie and Sanya Vay. They moved to a much larger location uptown at 117 N. Main St., across the street from the Lexington Police Department, in 2018.

But 2023 brought a major growth spurt when Saro Vey teamed up with business partner Landon Grant of Welcome to launch the Red Donut Mobile food trailer business in March. That business, which has grown to two trailers, serves the shop’s donuts and other pastries and coffee at festivals, corporate events, sports events and employee appreciation events.

Saro Vey (left) and Landon Grant stand behind the counter at the new Red Donut shop at the Wallburg Landing shopping center. (Vikki Broughton Hodges/Davidson Local)

This past August, Vey and Grant teamed up again to open a second Red Donut Shop at 6640 Old Highway 52 in Welcome, across from Kimono’s Japanese Restaurant.

Their new Wallburg shop opened Dec. 29 at 4484 Walburg Landing Drive, just off Highway 109, in the shopping center of the same name.

Vay noted they tested the Wallburg market by having one of the Red Donut Mobile trailers in the community several times to gauge customer reception. Since that was positive, they began looking for a storefront location.

Grant, who previously lived in Wallburg before moving to Welcome, noted he has been a frequent customer of Chopstix for years. He asked the owner of the popular sushi restaurant, which is also located in the Wallburg Landing shopping center, if he knew of a location and he was told about a space available a couple doors down in the same center.

“They (Chopstix owners) have been very supportive and telling their guests to check us out,” Grant noted. “And they have customers that drive in from Winston-Salem, High Point and Thomasville.”

In fact, the shopping center is on the Davidson-Forsyth county line. The business partners said they hope to catch some of that out- of-town traffic as well as from the local Wallburg community. They noted Oak Grove and Ledford high schools are close as well.

With a large Sheetz across Highway 109 from Wallburg Landing and the Wallburg Town Center just down the highway as well as a couple of restaurants, Vey and Grant said the location is ideal. Vay said the Wallburg and Welcome shops serve about 90 percent of what the main shop in Lexington offers, including a wide variety of doughnuts, fritters, bear claws, custom-filled bismarks and other sweets as well as coffees, frappes and bubble teas. All of the pastries are made in the kitchen of the Lexington location and delivered to the Wallburg and Welcome shops daily.

The three shops now employ a total of about 25 employees, Vay noted.

Grant, who also owns LG Productions, a media marketing company in Welcome, noted each shop has its own interior décor theme. Lexington has a barbecue theme while the Wallburg shop has a race car theme, complete with a race car simulator game and a large photo of a Ferrari and another photo of Gray Leadbetter, a young professional race car driver who delivered Red Donut products to customers during the Covid shutdown. She donated the race car simulator game to the shop and knows Grant through his marketing business.

The Welcome shop is decorated in a space theme with photos that were taken when Vey and Grant launched a doughnut into space on a GPS and camera-equipped weather balloon as a marketing promotion last spring.

The business hours in Wallburg and Welcome are from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday while the Lexington shop opens at 6 a.m. weekdays and 7 a.m. Saturday.

Vey and Grant said they are considering keeping the Wallburg location open until 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday to get after-dinner dessert business. They are also talking with officials at local high schools about bringing their food trailers to games.