Almonte-area inventor patents his 'most beautiful' doughnuts

Publisher: The Ottawa Citizen

Page: A1 / FRONT Section: News

Byline: Jacob Berkowitz

Source: The Ottawa Citizen

For years, Ed Atwell has been a Tim Hortons regular, always drinking his Timmy's coffee with a hint of envy and admiration. That's because for years, Mr. Atwell has had a doughnut dream, one that in his mind's eye he could see and taste, but couldn't quite cook up. Until now.

After years of perseverance, Mr. Atwell's creation is finally here -- and it has made him the first Canadian with a patented doughnut.

The Sunnymoon doughnut is a half-chocolate, half-vanilla hoop of cakey dough. It's formed through a patented mixing process so the chocolate and vanilla doughs don't mix, but rather bond in a yin-yang alliance. Sunnymoons started rolling out to grocery stores across Canada this spring.

Mr. Atwell, 39, who lives in the village of Clayton, 15 kilometres southwest of Almonte, has deep roots in the doughnut business. He attended public school in Brampton, Ont., where he chummed with Steven Joyce, son of Tim Hortons co-founder Ron Joyce.

When he was 18, fresh out of high school, he landed his first job as a baker at Country Style Donuts' head office doughnut shop on Highway 7 north of Toronto. He went on to bake and then consult for a number of independent shops, including the now defunct Bytes Donuts in Kanata.

"I take doughnuts very seriously," says Mr. Atwell, who with a beard and unruly shoulder-length hair resembles a biker as much as a doughnut philosopher.

In the 1990s, he felt that Canada's legendary doughnut R&D had gone stale. The 1960s and 1970s were Canada's glory days. During the era of flower power, Timmy's bakers created the apple fritter and the Dutchie. In 1976, a brainwave launched the Timbit. (According to a Tim Hortons spokesperson, none of the company's doughnuts are patented.) In this creative furnace there were the inevitable flops, including a protein-fortified health doughnut -- a doughnut for body-builders of the weight-lifting sort -- patented to U.S. inventors. But since Timmy's introduction of the cake-style sour cream doughnut in the late 1980s, Mr. Atwell says our creativity has been on the shelf.

"Since that time, I don't think I know of a doughnut that's been very significant," he says over coffee in a diner near his home.

Until now.

Mr. Atwell's Sunnymoon doughnut offers "uniqueness to a fairly flat category," says Toronto's Robert Shapiro, who handles Sunnymoon's national sales. In what is essentially a dozen-variety business of grocery-store doughnuts, from glazed yeast rings (Canadians' favourites) to mini-doughnuts, Sunnymoon is making its bid for shelf space by being different.

"It has eye appeal," says Luis Deviveiros, general manager of Toronto-based Annette's Donuts, which cooks up the Sunnymoon. Annette's is Canada's largest producer of grocery store doughnuts, frying up almost a million doughnuts a day, five days a week.

Sunnymoon's symmetry certainly hooked Mr. Atwell. He says that making the first one (at an undisclosed location; Mr. Atwell is wary of a doughnut patent war) was a moment of inventor's euphoria.

"When I made the product for the first time they were the most beautiful doughnuts I'd ever seen," says Mr. Atwell, who still has the now-puck-hard prototypes.

Since March Canadians have had no trouble gnoshing Sunnymoons. Annette's has shipped almost half a million of them to stores from Vancouver to Halifax.

But will Sunnymoon survive the vagaries of Canada's highly competitive doughnut market? We're the world's No. 1 doughnut eaters per capita and buy two-thirds of our sugary dough hoops in the supermarket.

"Doughnuts are an impulse buy, and the first buy is always on the look, the second is on taste," says Annette's Mr. Deviveiros, noting that Sunnymoon is getting repeat orders, an initial sign that the product could have an enduring shelf life. It's Canada's children who'll make the final call, since they're the driving force behind grocery-store doughnut purchases, says Mr. Shapiro.

After seven years of work to turn an idea into a reality, Mr. Atwell is philosophical about the future. He has lots of other ideas for the Sunnymoon line, including other mixes of flavours. "Just watch me," he says with a smile. But Mr. Atwell doesn't want to talk about possibly building an empire, or his first royalty cheque. What excites him is sharing what he's learned from his quintessentially Canadian creative journey.

"Going down the whole inventor route made me a better person," reflects Mr. Atwell of the entrepreneur's inevitable emotional peaks and disappointments, hard work and dark nights of doubt. "It taught me to be more sure of myself. The doughnut taught me to realize who I am."