As Shipley Do-Nuts expands beyond its Texas home base, the 370-unit chain finds itself doing a bit of education around kolaches.
“Eastern Europeans settled in Texas in the 1800s and brought kolaches. They’re part of the Texas-Czech tradition, made with a sweet yeast dough and usually filled with fruit or cottage cheese,” said Kaitlyn Venable, director of culinary at Shipley Do-Nuts.
Shipley introduced sweet kolaches to the menu in 1995, and in the past, the chain has incorporated smokehouse sausage, cheese, ham and jalapeños into kolache fillings. But Venable wanted to try more familiar breakfast ingredients to move the pastries into the morning daypart. “Our busiest window is between 6 and 9 a.m., when people come in to buy doughnuts,” she said. “We wanted to give them more options.”
Using the same yeast dough that encloses the sweeter kolache fillings, Venable developed four breakfast filling variations: Egg and cheese, egg and sausage, egg and bacon and egg and jalapeño.
“We put the kolaches before a consumer panel and the feedback was ‘what’s a kolache,’” said Venable. “So we changed the marketing, renaming them ‘breakfast sandwiches.’”
The breakfast kolaches became the most successful limited-time offer in Shipley Do-Nuts’ 88-year history and earned a spot on the permanent menu in 2024. But from idea to launch took about a year.
It starts with the dough
The kolache dough is handcrafted in each of Shipley Do-Nuts mostly franchised locations. “It’s the same as our doughnut dough, light and airy but with a lower sugar content,” said Venable.
While Shipley Do-Nuts used to self-manufacture the yeast dough mix, “we grew out of our space and now we outsource it to a third party,” she added. It’s then mixed with yeast and water at each location to form the dough.
She figured scrambled eggs would make the best filling, but the doughnut shops aren’t equipped to cook them. Instead, the eggs are scrambled sous-vide style with butter and come in already cooked.
The eggs are then stuffed into the dough, along with American cheese for the Egg & Cheese variation, and baked one tray at a time. There are warmers near the registers to keep the “sandwiches” warm until it’s time to bake another tray.
“The Egg & Cheese and Bacon & Egg [made with applewood-smoked bacon] are the most popular ones, selling for $2.99 and $3.49 respectively,” said Venable.
To perfect the sausage variation, she opted for crumbled breakfast sausage instead of the traditional Czech smoked sausage, which is in a long shape. “The breakfast kolaches are formed into a round shape, which is different than the original oblong sausage kolaches, so the crumbled sausage worked better,” she said.
When the four kolaches launched last year, they outsold all of the production and kept breaking sales records. Consumers were drawn to their portability, high protein value and taste. “Many bought a half dozen at a time,” said Venable.
At the end of 2024, a new Bacon, Egg & Cheese kolache debuted as a limited-time offer, available through Dec. 31. It’s filled with a trio of the savory breakfast ingredients.
What’s next?
Also in 2024, Shipley moved into its new Houston headquarters, opened a test kitchen and brought in state-of-the-art production equipment for its proprietary dough mix. The plan is to accelerate menu innovation. “We’re always looking at new flavors for our doughnuts and kolaches, but I’m also working on expanding our coffee beverages,” said Venable.
Right now, she’s testing a barbecue brisket kolache slated to launch over the summer. Mini sausage kolaches and snackable apple fritters are also in the works, she added.
The chef is keeping a close watch on two of the biggest menu trends—beverages and snacks—as inspiration for future R&D.