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SOMEWHERE IN THE OHIO VALLEY — The inside of a food truck is roomier than one standing outside — perhaps waiting expectantly within the hug-like scent plume that only a donut fryer parked outside a coffee shop can produce — might expect.

That’s a good thing. Jeremy Pasztor, owner of Holey Rollers Donut Truck, is tall and the day is cold. He and the two teen daughters that run the works are layered up with a combination of sweats, flannels and a knit cap that seems to somehow expand into a gaiter whenever the back door opens to ventilate the truck’s kerosene heater.

With just enough space and warmth to function, Pasztor stands in the startling blue truck’s middle to monitor pastries. They make their doughy way down a hopper before being mechanically shepherded through bubbling oil and transferred into a stainless steel bowl.

Solara Pasztor, 18, is to his right, leaning slightly out an order window at the truck’s back corner, taking requests from a handful of customers whose bodies are contracted tightly against the February morning.

Lili Hartline, 19, and a student at Belmont Technical College, is speed piping glaze on a half dozen s’mores-style donuts — a customer favorite involving chocolate glaze topped with graham cracker crumbs and marshmallow icing.

“We’re on the fly all the time,” Pasztor says of going from order to a boxed-up product handed out the front door. “Each person is five minutes.”

That simple path is exactly what Pasztor — whose blended family also includes another daughter, 13, and an 8-year-old son — was looking for when he started thinking food truck a handful of years ago.

He ticked off critical points of his business plan on one hand.

Since the donuts are made to order and toppings are low on the perishability scale, there’s little to no risk of making more product than can be sold, and Health Department inspections are straight forward.

A gas-powered generator — rather than a propane-fed stove with an open flame and large hood — is all that’s needed to operate, which he said keeps insurance rates lower.

“We’re not like a barbeque place that has to sell what it’s made for the day,” the Lansing man said of having the flexibility to respond to sudden vagaries such as bad weather. “If nobody comes in an hour, we can be pretty assured nobody’s going to come in the next hour. We can shut down in like 10 minutes.”

On the flipside, when donuts are flying out the door, the operation is profitable enough he said he can pay his daughters an hourly rate in the high $20s. “That’s a living wage. That’s really what everyone should be making.”

The fact he can deal with an issue that arose last summer, soon after the truck opened in May, is related, he said. He said Hartline struggles with the heat and that he plans to install some sort of air conditioning to make summer 2022 more comfortable.

Pasztor certainly knows how to make such a thing happen. He spent more than two years retrofitting the 1989 Snap-on, Inc. rescue into a food truck complete with a fryer, a line of heated pots that keep glazes liquefied and a sink.

“It’s what I needed,” he added of being able to make such decisions for himself. “I don’t want to work for anybody else.”

Hartline and Solara Pasztor may not want to either. While Hartline is taking initial college coursework, both young women said they are feeling the donut vibe for now.

“I love working with my family,” Hartline said. “My sister’s like my best friend. So, getting to spend the day with her is like the best part…And, the donuts are just fun.”

Solara Pasztor said she also enjoys the coziness of the family rolling out together in the morning – the truck is open 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. four to five days a week during cold weather months and up to seven days a week when it’s warm.

“It’s way better than working with random co-workers,” she said.

Pasztor smiled at that. He isn’t sure, but he may have founded a family business. “I wanted to be able to teach them a good work ethic and business decision-making skills regardless of what they want in 10 years or for 10 years.”

One of those decisions the family made was to consider the nature of donuts, he said.

While some food trucks are a launching pad to a bricks-and-mortar restaurant — namely the popular Cheese Melt truck that is now transitioning to a building in Warwood — he doesn’t think that makes sense for custom pastries.

“I want to be mobile,” he said of traveling to locations ranging from Wheeling Coffee Shoppe on Washington Avenue to the parking lot outside the St. Clair Lanes bowling alley in St. Clairsville.

The daughters laughed at how their arrival can play out. Once, while parked outside a Lowe’s, an unusually large group of customers suddenly formed and headed their way. “It looked like there was a crowd of zombies coming, there were so many at once,” Hartline joked.

The bottom line is another reason to keep rolling, he noted. A food truck may need (and already has) a new transmission or brake job now and then, but operating costs are generally lower.

He did acknowledge that the business model has not been without controversy. In 2021, Holey Rollers had a conflict with some bricks-and-mortar business owners that didn’t want the noise of the truck’s generator near their doors and complained to Moundsville city officials.

(In another facet of mobile vs. stationary business conflict, Wheeling passed a law in 2020 that limits how close food trucks can park — even in a public right of way — to bricks-and-mortar businesses selling similar products in at least some locations. )

Holey Rollers relocated in the Moundsville situation, but Pasztor said whatever problem there once was has since flipped. “So many people want us in so many different places, we don’t want to spread ourselves too thin.”

The truck keeps a regular schedule in cold weather months, going to certain locations on certain weekdays per a schedule posted on Facebook. But, in warmer weather, he said regular stops will be limited to Mondays-Thursdays to keep weekends open for festivals.

Such practicalities aside, Pasztor said one of his favorite parts of Holey Rollers is that donuts tend to make people happy. He said that is especially true given their custom-order mode, which allows thousands of flavor possibilities.

Donuts come in three sizes to start. There are glazes and icings in such flavors as maple, chocolate, cream cheese, blueberry, banana and marshmallow. Other toppings include graham cracker crumbs, coconut, cinnamon and sugar, peanuts, pecans, powdered sugar, rainbow sprinkles, chocolate sprinkles and bacon.

“S’mores is a really popular one,” Hartline said. Bacon is also a hit in cold months — at least with some customers, she added, making some air quotes around the words, “man topping.”

Bacon, marshmallow icing or whatever, Pasztor had some quote marks of his own. “The ‘basic donut’ is whatever you want it to be.”

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