Meet the Doughnut-Maker Taking on Krispy Kreme from a Tiny Pub Kitchen

As I walk into the King's Arms, a Salford pub on the edge of Manchester's city centre, I'm greeted by its permanent resident, Charlie, a black-and-white cat who struts atop the bar like he owns the place. It's barely gone midday but the Buzzcocks' "Get On Our Own" is booming through the speakers. Soon, the pub's first customer arrives.

"Is Charlie meowing because he's still hungover from last night?" he asks the bartender in a thick Mancunian accent.

According to the Guardian, the King's Arms is "Britain's most bohemian back-street boozer," due, presumably, to the experimental theatre that takes place upstairs and its long tradition of booking emerging local bands. But in the pub's small kitchen, a different kind of artistic endeavour is taking place. Back here, Ed Beech has set up an impromptu doughnut production line, pumping out glazed, sugar-topped, and jam-filled creations to sell across the city as the Manchester Doughnut Company.

Beech emerges from the kitchen in his chef whites and suggests that we sit down for a chat in the room adjacent to the bar. He explains that his operation is separate from the main activity of the King's Arms. In fact, Beech is usually gone by the time the pub gets busy.

"It's an old building, it's an old kitchen," he tells me, adding that he usually starts work at 3 AM. "I've only got a small fryer, so I can fry about 12 doughnuts at a time and it takes about five minutes a batch. You can do the maths."

Originally from Reading, Beech settled in Manchester after university with his girlfriend—now wife.

"I was a chef for about ten years but I was working with people that didn't share my passion or commitment to making fresh food," he tells me. After quitting a job in hospitality recruitment, he began cheffing at the King's Arms, which is owned by a relative of his wife. I ask how he made the jump from Sunday lunches to bespoke doughnuts.

"I was already kind of making doughnuts at home and I'd seen some people doing interesting things in London at Bread Ahead, St. John, and Crosstown," Beech explains.

He soon mastered classic jam- and vanilla-filled varieties, as well as iced rings. From there, Beech moved onto more unusual creations. Cereal milk, lychee and lemongrass, and banana passionfruit cheesecake are a few of the flavours he has debuted in recent months.

"There's a lot of nostalgia attached to a doughnut and I play on that, but you have to improve it and take it up a level," Beech says.

He pays similar attention to the ingredients he uses.

"Everything I can make, I make," he tells me, stressing that aside from his signature Crunchy Nut, he avoids adding branded confectionary to his doughnuts, setting them apart from the ubiquitous Oreo-topped baked goods that litter Instagram. His vegan varieties use natural ingredients like applesauce and aquafaba to achieve desired flavour and texture, and he settled upon his most successful dairy- and egg-free dough while researching traditional South American doughnuts.

"In Peru, they have picarones, which is a sweet potato doughnut that is naturally vegan—it's not messed around with. If I make something vegan, I want to make it out of natural things, I don't really wanna start adding xanthan gum."

Following an unsuccessful attempt at selling doughnuts on the bar at the King's Arms ("They weren't selling, so I sacked that off") and another false start with Deliveroo, Beech finally found his stride at the food markets around Manchester.

"Even then, I was still concerned that it wouldn't work, that people wouldn't buy enough," he admits. "When I did my first GRUB [a Manchester street food event], I took 150 [doughnuts] with me as that's sort of the average the dessert guys did, so I did 150 too. The event started at midday and I was gone by quarter past two."

Finally making progress, Beech stopped cooking for the pub's patrons and went into doughnuts full-time, finding that his newfound customers' preferences varied even between close sites within Manchester city centre, such as the financial district of Spinningfields and the Northern Quarter.

"I noticed that if I was in the Northern Quarter, certain flavours would sell quicker than in Spinningfields," he tells me. "People are in the Northern Quarter because they want to be there, so they'll buy the Crunchy Nut or the vegan ones, while in Spinningfields people are walking through, so they're more likely to buy a raspberry jam or vanilla."

Local newspaper the Manchester Evening News equates Beech's success with "the wider trend in Manchester for chef-led ventures, which focus on specialising in one thing." Beech believes it's a lot simpler than that.

"You just can't buy a good doughnut in Manchester," he says. "Well, you can now."

With his business growing so quickly, expansion is on his mind.

"I would like doughnut shops in and around Manchester," he tells me. "People say, 'What are you going to do, are you going to take on Krispy Kreme?' But while it's a similar product, I don't think it's the same thing. Some people will always go for a Krispy Kreme, while other people will seek out something handmade and fresh. So, shops and a few of them would be ideal—why not?"

For now, Beech will continue to make doughnuts in the small kitchen at the King's Arms.

"I will stay here for as long as I can because if I'm honest, I don't pay a lot of rent on it," he says. "And it's convenient as it's a good location for me to do it from—it's not far for me to go to other places."

While perhaps not ideal for making doughnuts on a large scale, Manchester Doughnut Company's unusual HQ undoubtedly adds something to its charm. Plus, Beech doesn't have far to walk for an after-work pint.