Cheeky Doughnuts: ‘A completely different experience’

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

February 10, 2025

KIMBERLY – Founder and Owner Kim Thiel said Cheeky Doughnuts is a “tapestry – it’s like a timeline of my life.”

“The night before we opened, I just sat down and I looked at this space…,” she said. “It’s like the entire space is built from experiences I’ve had, places I’ve visited and people that have inspired me.”

Thiel said there’s a story behind every aspect of the doughnut and coffee shop, located at 710 W. Kimberly Ave. – and though she’s only been open for two months, she said it’s “been so rewarding.”

Open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday through Sunday, Thiel said more often than not, her made-from-scratch doughnuts are sold before the afternoon closing time.

“Out of the 12 days a month we’re open, we sell out probably nine of those,” she said. “I hate selling out, (but I also) love it, because it’s like, ‘Wow, that was amazing.’”

Thiel said it’s a tricky balance – making enough doughnuts so all her patrons can taste the deliciously fresh, hand-made doughnuts she and her team shape every morning, but not making so many that some don’t make it out the door.

“It’s hard to judge – every single week is different as far as the traffic and what day is busier,” she said. “Usually, Saturdays are the busiest, and we usually sell out by noon.”

With a rotating staff of 15 employees, Thiel said her Cheeky Doughnuts team is made up of those who encouraged her doughnut dreams.

“Both my daughters work here,” she said. “One is an eighth grader, one is a junior (in high school) and some of their friends work here. Some of my friends work here. Some of my family works here. So, it’s a very close-knit group of people that have brought this to life.”

Life-long entrepreneur

Thiel said entrepreneurship was something she was exposed to early on in her life – as her family of four bought a coffee shop in Fish Creek when she was 14 years old.

“We just had a big change in life, and my parents were like, ‘Let’s just do this’ – and so we bought the coffee shop,” she said. “So, every summer, from freshman year through the age of 20, I lived in Door County every weekend.”

Working for her family’s coffee shop, Thiel said, taught her the “ins and outs of entrepreneurship” and how to build relationships – embodying the importance of community connection.

“My parents were really big on building relationships and being able to tell our customers the story behind everything we carried in the shop,” she said. “So, I learned how to be a people person from that experience.”

Thiel said she and her younger sister hand-wrote all of the coffee shop’s menus that featured recipes and “concoctions for coffee drinks” they would create themselves.

“And this is before coffee was even cool – there wasn’t even a Starbucks in the state yet,” she said. “So we had a blank slate as far as what we were creating. We just did it from our hearts and from our tummies and what we wanted. So it was almost like intuitive business creation.”

After working in restaurant and retail management following her time at the coffee shop, Thiel said she found herself “creating a photography business around 2007” when her first child was born.

“I ran my own photography business for the last 17 years in downtown Appleton, and about five years ago, I knew I was ready for a ‘next,’” she said. “I didn’t want to be behind a screen anymore. I loved being with people. I loved making things, creating things – I’m a connector.”

Thiel said this revelation inspired her to work with a job coach who helped her realize she wanted to work in the food industry.

“I’m a big foodie,” she said. “I travel a lot. I love food. I always seek out the little mom-and-pop places or the specialty places, and then whenever I came home, it (felt) like there was such a void or (lack of a) unique variety in food around here.”

Reflecting on a childhood memory, Thiel said she and her family visited a campground near the Wisconsin Dells that made homemade doughnuts for its campers every Sunday morning.

“It was like this special thing, and you had to be a camper, and the whole campground would line up… to wait in line for these fresh doughnuts,” she said. “It was the first fresh doughnut I ever had, and you don’t get them very often – like a warm doughnut. It’s a completely different experience.”

Years later, Thiel said she took a road trip to South Central Wisconsin where she again experienced the taste of a fresh, hand-made doughnut at a local shop – which sparked her childhood memory, further solidifying her food industry niche.

“I knew I wanted to do something with food, I knew I wanted it to be a specialty focus and I knew I wanted it to be small,” she said. “About five years ago, I went on a road trip and I experienced a doughnut shop very similar to what I have now. It really catapulted the whole idea.”

Curbside doughnuts

Following her road trip, Thiel said she was inspired to check out “a stack of doughnut recipe books” and started making them at home.

“Then COVID-19 came about, and my kids were home from school, and we had a ‘stay-at-home’ in order,” she said. “So I would text all my friends and (tell them) we were making doughnuts today. We called it curbside doughnuts.”

Thiel said her daughters – Finnley and Ellie – would hand-write menus and come up with flavor ideas just like she and her sister did for her family’s coffee shop.

“My kids would run out with their little masks and the menu, they would take orders and they’d run back to the house,” she said. “I would make the doughnuts, and it was the sweetest little start to COVID.”

After the pandemic settled down a bit, Thiel said she met with a realtor to try and find a building for her shop.

“I didn’t have a timeline – I just said… it’s going to work out (and) this is what I’m looking for,” she said.

In 2021, Thiel said an offer she had put on a building fell through, and that it wasn’t until the winter of 2024 that another opportunity presented itself.

“My oldest got her driver’s license, and so I told her, ‘I’m going to teach you how to road trip,’” she said. “I took them on a road trip to this doughnut shop so they could experience and see what was in my mind. We had an amazing experience, and the girls were totally on board.”

On the way home from that road trip, with her eldest daughter in the driver’s seat, Thiel said she received an email from her realtor informing her of a bakery that had just gone up for sale in Kimberly.

“I knew exactly where (it) was, because I had my eye on it,” she said. “As soon as we got home from that vacation, I set up a meeting to view the building, I put in an offer to purchase and it was accepted.”

Thiel said she thought the community was a bit hesitant toward her business at first because of how established the previous bakery was.

“People would stop in from the community and ask if we were carrying the same recipes from the previous owners, and I’m like, ‘just give me a chance,’” she said. “The previous owners were there for, I think, 16 years, and they had become a flavor of the community.”

But now, in the two months Cheeky Doughnuts has been open, Thiel said she feels nothing but grateful for the community’s acceptance of her and her business.

“I feel like it’s just hug after hug – with physical hugs and words – and kids with their messy faces and adults sharing that this is the best doughnut they have ever had – it is such a heartfelt experience,” she said. “I am so grateful that I took this leap, that I trusted myself. I’m grateful to the community for giving me a chance and just trying something that’s new.”

‘A lot of love’

Thiel said her and her daughter’s curbside doughnuts venture during COVID helped her perfect the recipe she uses to make the doughnuts now offered in her shop.

“It’s one dough that we use for everything, and it’s a process,” she said. “It takes about 24 hours to make this dough. So there’s a lot of care that goes into it, and it’s (made with) all whole ingredients.”

Each morning, Thiel said she and her team will hand-weigh and -shape every Cheeky doughnut out of dough made the night before – as it must rise before being molded.

“There are no machines involved here,” she said, “It’s a small community inside of Cheeky that makes all this magic happen. There’s a lot of love in these little suckers.”

Also paying homage to her entrepreneurial roots, Thiel said she wanted Cheeky Doughnuts to offer “really good coffee” as well.

“I knew I wanted my coffee to come from Door County, so I (work with) a good friend of mine – his name is Randy Isley,” she said. “He owns his own coffee lab – small batch, small roast coffee – and he roasts a private blend for us every month. So, we have really great coffee from Door County, which is a really big part of my story.”

Thiel said she is also grateful for the support of the restaurant community in the Fox Valley and everyone who has helped her achieve this dream.

“I have a whole tribe of great people that help me and are willing, and the restaurant industry around here as a whole has been so kind, welcoming, supportive and helpful,” she said. “It’s a beautiful community and I’m happy to be a part of it.”

Above all else, Thiel said she’s proud to have built her business with her daughters by her side.

“It’s been a gift to give them that – to show them that you can have a dream, you can do anything and you can make a career doing something you love,” she said. “I love people, I love connecting, I love making things (and that’s) everything that came together to create Cheeky Doughnuts.”

For more on Cheeky Doughnuts, visit its website, cheekydoughnuts.square.sites, or find it on social media.