Why Third Culture Bakery Might Take the Popular Mango-Passion Fruit Mochi Donut Off the Menu | Eater SF

"Operating as a chromed-out Berkeley shop with three locations across two states and another on the way, Third Culture Bakery is known for its signature mochi muffins, doughnuts, and matcha, and is run by co-owners Wenter Shyu and Sam Butarbutar. They say pandemic-driven supply-chain problems threaten their most popular item, the mango–passion fruit doughnut: the Hawaiian farm that supplies and purees the passion fruit didn't harvest in 2020 so there's no back stock, they've bought all available fruit but—selling about 20,000 mango–passion fruit doughnuts every month—are on track to run out by early November, at which point the doughnut will come off the menu. Substitutes are difficult because the farm also processes the fruit into puree, Third Culture stopped doing that in-house as it scaled, Butarbutar is "very particular" about the specific passion fruit they use, and potential suppliers must be able to ship to their California and Colorado locations. To stretch supplies they removed passion-fruit beverages from the menu, and other global supply issues have hit the business as well: a wholeship delay in the Suez Canal has driven up prices for quality allspice, Japanese matcha now takes almost a month to arrive instead of a week, and costs for takeout boxes, gloves, and parchment paper have doubled or tripled. Shyu says the passion-fruit problem "felt like I got punched in the face," but the team is pressing ahead with a matcha cafe opening in Walnut Creek that was delayed from August to an October target because of a fire-inspection hold—so there may still be some chewy mango–passion fruit doughnuts in the mix." - Lauren Saria