Colby Kingston ’18 on the benefit of an economics major and the love of tiny treats
Walking into Satellite Doughnuts, the brainchild of Kennebunkport, Maine, native Colby Kingston ’18, you’re immediately tantalized by a counter full of miniature treats, ranging from chocolate caramel coconut to lemon meringue. You might smell bacon cooking or see blueberry pie filling being made. In the back, you’ll see Flipper, the doughnut robot, spitting out batter and turning the pastries.
Here’s some insider knowledge about Kingston’s business:
“Being a Gen-Z who finds new food spots through social media so frequently, the opportunity to actually start my own picture-perfect place is where it started. [I thought,] how crazy would it be if people wanted to Instagram what I was putting out to the world?”
“It was really important to me to make a space that was Instagrammable. My logo is enormous — it takes up an entire wall. I’ve got lots of little photo opportunities, signs in the window that say funny things about doughnuts, in hopes that people will see how pretty they are and be urged to take a photo. That’s been a huge driver of a lot of my business.”
“The best way to learn how to do something is to pretend you know what you’re doing. A lot of times people ask me, ‘These are so good. How did you learn how to make doughnuts?’ The Internet’s a wonderful place.”
“I think anything miniature that isn’t normally served that way is going to have a great chance to rise in this environment.”
“We’re really lucky that the Bush family has their summer residence here in town, so a lot of different people come to visit them — Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives) is one of those. She’s a good friend of the Bushes, so she came last summer and actually brought the doughnuts home to President and Mrs. Bush.”
“Watching Brittany Buonocore O’Connor ’12 build Flour and Salt (in downtown Hamilton) and knowing it as this bakery that my friends and I would special order things from our first and second years to becoming the full-blown café that it is now, that continues to be very inspiring for me.”
“Ultimately [my economics major] is making me more savvy. I’ve experienced a lot of situations where I would speak to older people who were impressed — but, in a lot of cases, skeptical — of my age. Some of the things that I was able to speak with them about came directly from my education in the econ department at Colgate. That was a huge leg up for me.”