Delight in every bite: Murray’s old-fashioned, homemade doughnuts still a popular treat

How does one go from a career as a lab manager in the carpet business to making doughnuts full time?

That is part of the story of how Johnny Murray would eventually start Murray's Donuts on Bultman Drive about 22 years ago, and throw in courage, persistence, long-term employees and plenty of dough and sugar, and one has a formula for business success.

Johnny Murray and his faithful — and also hard-working — wife, Julie, recently sat down and discussed how they have managed to last as a mom-and-pop doughnut shop in the always-competitive restaurant business.

Murray's Donuts is the only shop in Sumter that still makes old-fashioned, homemade donuts from scratch.

In his first career, Johnny Murray worked 28 years in the carpet business in his hometown of Greenville, Mississippi. He was primarily a lab manager over the formulas for all the various colors that were put in carpets, he said.

He then went out on his own and did technical work for textile mills and dabbled on the side with some friends that were part of a doughnut franchise. From them, he initially learned the art of making homemade doughnuts.

A deal to start his own franchise with the parent company fell apart, and Murray decided to start his own shop in Dalton, Georgia, called Murray's Donuts in the early 1990s.

"I figured formulas with making dyes and chemicals was the same thing as cooking," he said. "So, I just got everything together and opened it up in Georgia in 1993."

He eventually closed the shop in Georgia and placed all his equipment into storage.

While still doing work for textile mills, he had industrial customers in Sumter, he said.

In one of those business visits he met Julie, a Sumter native, in 1997. They married in 1998, and Johnny moved here.

The couple then decided to open a shop on Bultman, and it became operational in early September 2002.

KEYS TO SUCCESS

In addition to grit, courage and persistence, Murray's continues to make old-fashioned, homemade doughnuts fresh every day.

The operation begins at 2 a.m. every morning, and employees start from scratch and make up 80 pounds of dough per day. After cutting that up, they make another 80 pounds, and the process is done several times each morning, Murray said.

From start to finish, a homemade doughnut takes about 1.5 hours to two hours to make, he added.

The operational system is not automated like many franchises, and his older equipment cannot be bought today, so he performs regular maintenance on it.

His business philosophy is to sell doughnuts in volume as opposed to making numerous specialty doughnuts with various stripes, colors and flavors like some doughnut shops. Those specialty doughnuts are "more decoration than it is doughnut," he said, and also take a long time to make.

"We want to sell a basic, glazed doughnut that is really good," Murray said. "Instead of the real fancy doughnuts, we make 35 different kinds of doughnuts, but we have stayed with the same philosophy for 20-plus years. We add something new every once in a while, but we are just into the old-fashioned doughnut.

"And they are all made by hand and rolled out in the morning with a rolling pin and cut, and they never look quite the same. They all got their own personalities."

And people love them.

"We have had people pull up through the drive-through window and get a doughnut," he said, "and come right back around and right back through the drive-through again."

Julie Murray added that customers start eating them in the back area and then want more.

Long-term employees are also part of the shop's success.

Among Murray's eight employees, a pair have been with the business basically since it opened, and two more have been there almost 10 years.

"We just try to be really fair and consider that they have families as well," Julie Murray said.

All that has added up to increasing business through the years, they said.

Other items on the menu include hotdogs, muffins and breakfast sandwiches where the bread is doughnut bread, Julie Murray said.

The shop's hotdogs won Best Hot Dog in the Best of Sumter competition this year for the first time.

NEW DINING AREA AND NEW ITEMS
This spring, Murray's opened a new dining area with extra seating, and new items include a nicer paper cup with a lid for coffee, like a McDonald's cup, Johnny Murray said. A new, premium-roast Colombian coffee has also been introduced.

A few more doughnut variations are on the menu, and cookies — oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip — have also been added, he said.

Two more new items include a Painter's Choice Breakfast Sandwich, which is a sausage and cheese patty between two glazed donuts, and a Waffle Dog. The Waffle Dog will be a breakfast and lunch item with sausage links inside in the morning and a hotdog inside for lunch.

"We invite people to come in and check out our new items and dine in our newly added dining area," Julie Murray said.