I was born and raised on the central coast of California. We had a local donut shop that was the genesis of everything. It’s not around anymore, but it was one of the best donut shops of all time — probably because of childhood memories, you know, but we knew the owners too. I moved to Utah around 1999 and have a wife and three kids. We’re always busy. For work, it’s a little hard to explain, but I do compliance and security for utility companies. That’s what allows me to travel around and visit donut shops.

Malea is from Utah and my wife and I met her a year ago at the FitCon bodybuilding show. She was a volunteer backstage along with us. Small world that she moved to Texas and ended up meeting you through Instagram!

What I find interesting about the bodybuilding world is that you’re living such a restricted diet, so it makes the sweets that much more valuable. The flip side of that: I used to run a lot and do marathons and stuff, but with endurance athletes, that’s not the case. You’d think they’d really be into donuts, but those kind of athletes are more into bagels. Being a runner and having been involved with this world, it’s kind of funny to see that difference. My wife did quite a few shows over the years, but I haven’t taken it on myself. I do go to the gym everyday and watch what I eat except when I’m stuffing my face with donuts.

I started in April 2017 with the sole purpose of posting about donuts. My original Instagram account was All Things Donuts or Total Donuts. There’s really no rhyme or reason to the final name other than I spent a lot of time finding one that was available across all the social platforms. I was probably looking at a thesaurus online. The Unplugged thing has nothing to do with being a musician either, it was just available and when I put the two words together it sounded cool.

First off, any time you can get a fresh, hot, out of the fryer donut, it’s an unfair comparison. I’m not a big sweets guy, I’m more in it for a good flavor and for the dough. I’ve actually peeled the toppings off of donuts just to try the dough. Hey, maybe that’s what Donuts Unplugged really means!

SLC:

• Banbury Cross: Traditional donut shop
• Fresh Donut & Deli: Hole-in-the-wall, another traditional shop. Their maple bars are very good.
• My Sugar’s Donut Shopp: Probably my favorite. It’s a traditional donut shop, again, just really exceptional dough. They’re located in an industrial area so most people don’t know where it is.
• Provo Bakery: Good variety

Phoenix:

• Donut Parlor and Welcome Chicken + Donuts are my top 2 there.
• Fractured Prune: Great concept, although it’s a chain. Desert Donuts (about 40 minutes north of Phoenix) has a similar concept, but they take their flavor combos to the next level.

Chicago:

• Do-Rite had the best across the board.
• Firecakes and Doughnut Vault were dry both times we tried at the festivals. 

I’ll take Sidecar Doughnuts any day. The flavor combinations, the dough, everything.

A stack from Cowboy Donuts in Spanish Fork, Utah

Guru Donuts from Boise, Idado

*Editor’s Note: Check out the top donut shops across the country according to readers.

• PVDonuts in Providence
• Five Daughters in Nashville/Atlanta

It’s all my wife’s fault, but I thank her for it now. I planned on going to a handful of donut shops that day, maybe 6 or 7, so I started out early before the kids went to school. After we got the kids out the door, my wife and I hit up a couple of new ones together and we started mapping it out on Google. At every stop, I’m buying a dozen donuts or so…After stop #10 my wife said, “We gotta stop by Jack’s Donuts (franchise)” and along the way there was another shop, Dunford Bakers, and we realized that would make it a dozen donut shops. In the back of our truck, the seats are folded up and all the donut boxes are stacked. We got back home and the photo shoot commenced. It was insane.

Bryan posing in front of his Utah Donut Crawl collection on National Donut Day (2018)

After we were done, my wife posted on our neighborhood Facebook page about the leftovers, so we had people stopping by all day, We had people coming over at 10 at night to grab donuts and chat. 

Having the blog is a great conversation piece and provides that introduction. It’s definitely put me in touch with a lot of people, from all different walks of life. 

The biggest thing that’s come out of this is people asking me, “How do you do it?” Eating all of these donuts and staying fit. It gives the opportunity to share with people my journey, but also help them to understand that you can have treats if you moderate and keep a healthy diet otherwise. 

I haven’t laid out a grand master plan, but events are most proximate. I’ve begun to spin up an e-commerce side to my website. The guy behind Donut Explorers has affiliate links to donut stuff on Amazon. You can never find a single place that has donut-related stuff…you can find it on Zumiez, Amazon, even Kohl’s…so I thought it would be kind of fun to bring everything together in one place.

I don’t make any money off of the Donut Wall. It’s really big and I think people are afraid to use it! It came about from the bodybuilding connection. A good friend of ours promotes the Salt City Showdown here, and we’ve volunteered the past couple of years. We started talking about a treat table. I said “Hey, I have an idea of what we can do, and I want to take the treat table to a whole other level.” You see these donut walls at weddings and baby showers, but I wanted to put a manly spin to it. I designed and built it myself. This project, when it was done and seeing people’s reactions to it, totally blew me away. But it’s so big and it’s very industrial looking with aluminum, so it doesn’t fit in with every occasion. I need to create a softer version that would be more applicable for corporate events.

Bryan and his wife, Heather, in front of his Donut Wall

I have an iPhone X and I edit maybe half of my images. In all honesty, I know nothing about photography, I just learn as I go. In our neighborhood there’s probably 6 professional photographers so there’s lots of brains I can pick from. I use PhotoScape X on my Mac to edit: sharpen the image a little bit, adjust contrast, nothing too crazy. I definitely want to get a DSLR, but my primary issue is travel.

*Editor’s Note: I recommend the Sony Alpha mirrorless line since it’s light-weight, good to travel with, and comes with WiFi capabilities so you can transfer right to your phone. I personally shoot with the Sony Alpha 5100.

My Dad passed away about a year ago. He was 83-years-old and had Alzheimer’s. We’d go out for donuts during my childhood days. He wasn’t a donut fanatic like I am, but if I could share one with him now, I would. He did enjoy maple bars, so I think that’s where my obsession comes from. I never really put that together until a year ago.

Lately, we’ve had a lot of house projects. I built the deck; we’re putting in a yard. We like to camp. We have a camp trailer so we’re not roughing it, it’s “glamping,” but there are so many beautiful places to see in Utah. We love to travel, and that’s one of the perks of what I do for a living. I amass large quantities of Marriott points. Even though I do it technically for a living, I still enjoy doing it for fun. Otherwise, its chasing our 3 kids around.

12, 9 and 7. They’re at the age where Dad still knows everything. He can do anything, fix anything, so it’s a lot of fun for me — even if I’m making it up as I go along!

1. Yeast vs. Cake 
2. Coffee vs. Tea: Neither! I drink Monster Ultra Zero. I literally have a fridge in the garage that’s full of every Ultra Zero flavor out there. The flavors are amazing.
3. Vanilla vs. Chocolate
4. Ranch on Anything: Generally, I just put ranch on salads. I do enjoy Jack and the Box curly fries with ranch because it’s a high school memory.
5. Thin Crust vs. Deep Dish
6. Favorite Movie: Top Gun
7. Favorite City: LA! There’s the beach, there’s always something to do, and they have tons of donut shops.
8. Favorite Person to Follow on Instagram: @junkfoodaisle and @familyfooddude (formerly @poweredbyicecream)

I’m grateful for continued employment. I’m an independent contractor so I have my own business. I’m at the mercy of a lot of things and there are no guarantees. Budgets change, contracts change, so it can be a very volatile. I’m just grateful for the consistency of work for the past couple of years.

I’m looking forward to more donut adventures. One of the big things is getting the SLC Donut Festival off the ground.

There’s a lot of good stuff out there when it comes to donuts. What am I going to discover next? That’s what keeps me going. I’ve had some bad donuts, but if I come across any, I just don’t say anything about it. 

I have to give a shout-out to my wife. She definitely supports my donut obsession and has taken it on herself too. She even has donut jammies!