Although Steven and Melissa Asper met as teenagers while working in a restaurant in Winfield, Kansas, they never envisioned they would one day own a bakery together. By 2017, they had gotten married and lived in several states after leaving Kansas. After starting their family though, they realized wanted their children to grow up in Manhattan. Melissa took a position at K-State, while Steven worked as the Food Service Director for their daughter’s preschool. While working to accommodate different allergens and food preferences at the school, he and Melissa started working on a muffin recipe that could work for a vegan diet. Melissa started listing ingredients that could work together and after some experimentation, they created a recipe that was a hit with everyone. “I had never seen someone write a recipe from their mind,” says Steven.
The DoughBro food truck that started it all.
The success of the muffin sparked a bigger idea in Steven’s mind, and he suggested they start baking out of their home kitchen under the cottage bakery laws. They expected it to be a side business, just for fun. “When we established the LLC in fall 2019, I put it all in my name because we thought it would be mine,” says Melissa. However, their business grew exponentially during the 2019 holidays, and in January 2020, they made the decision to purchase a food truck in order to expand operations with a commercial kitchen. “Right after we bought it, Covid hit. Everything shut down, so we started renovating the trailer and adding in all the equipment. We both had jobs when we started, and we kept putting the revenue from the food truck back into the business.” Their business grew even more when they worked with a local financial agency to provide cupcakes to frontline workers.
Several months later, the couple attended the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, where Melissa had attended with family every year. Now that they had a food truck, they decided to drive out and participate in the festival for ten days. “We had a $300 residential oven in our food truck for the first two years, and we served a 13,000-person festival with that,” says Steven. The demand for their breakfast-themed food was so enormous, they decided to stay open 24/7 during the festival. “We had 17 temporary employees who were brought on and trained on the spot,” says Steven.
After the success of the festival, Melissa and Steven realized that DoughBro needed Melissa’s full-time attention. Steven had already made the switch to working for their business full-time, but now Melissa knew she needed to join him. Within weeks of Melissa’s plan to leave her job, the couple signed a lease at a location on the west side of town that had been The Pub, known to locals as Willie’s. As they were working on preparing the space for the grand opening in December 2021, a huge wind storm knocked a tree over onto their food truck, causing thousands of dollars in damage. “It was an overwhelming feeling, like ‘What do we do now?’ But we had another kitchen that we had just gotten ready. We were able to hold onto our commitments that we had made, but food truck events were out for three months.”
Melissa and Steven work on a pretzel order in the west side location.
Settling into a new location with new opportunities allowed them to commit to and expand on their DoughBro brand, with origins in their family values of food, music, and community. Melissa recalls how she grew up in a kitchen with her parents and grandparents, and the family kitchen was where she learned many of the recipes for which DoughBro is loved in Manhattan. “My grandma loved to feed people, and I learned that from her. My love language is feeding people. My grandpa taught me how to make gravy people freak out about. My mom taught me to make bierocks,” says Melissa.
Along with family recipes, music also played a significant role in Melissa’s life, influencing their business name. “My grandfather played the dobro, a classic bluegrass instrument, which became the name of our food truck. The dobro represented everything we wanted to do. We want to be surrounded by music, good food and people,” says Steven. Melissa’s grandfather also played the upright bass, which is the namesake of their downstairs pub, The Bassment. They had been working on updating the pub space, and the Bassment opened in summer 2022. “It’s starting to pick up,” adds Melissa.
The DoughBro began with a love of music, food and family, all rooted in Steven and Melissa’s commitment to giving back. After getting the new location opened and established, one of the most natural next steps for the couple was to open an incubator kitchen. The goal is to support other new restaurants and help other new chefs and restaurateurs gain a strong start by giving them the space to experiment and learn in a supportive environment. Looking back, they feel an incubator kitchen would have been a great benefit to them to try new recipes and experiment with volume, but they were not able to do this with the kitchen space they owned. “When we got into a space like this, it felt natural to offer something that would help other people who had been in the situation we were in, needing an incubator kitchen. We had a lot of help getting where we are.”
The couple are eager to share their kitchen and help other entrepreneurs get a strong start in their incubator kitchen.
Steven elaborates on how the incubator will serve new entrepreneurs. “People who are starting out don’t have a lot of money, so we offer our kitchen with all the equipment they would need to operate for licensing requirements. They can use our freezer and dry storage, and we can help them get access to our supply wholesale pricing.” He adds, “We keep it really simple. One or two people have used the kitchen so far, and we have had several more people express interest.” Their current arrangement is to offer the kitchen as an incubator during times in which they are not operating, after 2 p.m. each day, with the afternoon and evening is open to incubating bakers and chefs.
Melissa and Steven have many aspirations for the incubator kitchen. “I would love to see other people be successful. We have been the little guy, and we still are. But having help along the way gave us that push to keep going. There are tons of places you could start a business where there isn’t a need and you’re out of luck. Entrepreneurship is hard,” says Melissa. Steven adds, “People outgrowing the space is one of our main goals. We want to see people graduate to a bigger booth, a food truck or even open their own space. We want to help people bridge to the next step, and we want to be a bridge for that gap.”
The journey that Melissa and Steven took to where they are today was filled with challenges, but they are ready to look back and acknowledge that it was also full of support from their community. The incubator kitchen is an expression of their ongoing drive to help others at every step of not only their business growth but throughout their lives in general. “I don’t want to get to the end of our lives, and say ‘I wish we had given it a shot’,” says Melissa. Steven adds, “You’ve got one little life. None of things you earn matter. You’re supposed to use them to make a difference.”
Interested in starting your restaurant in the incubator kitchen? The DoughBro facility is dual licensed as a Food Establishment and a Food Processor, and is available for entrepreneurs without the risk and investment of opening a kitchen from scratch. Message or call Melissa or Steven at 620.218.2201 for more information.
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