HOLE LOTTA LOVE FOR MOM-AND-POP DOUGHNUT SHOPS LIFE ISN'T SUGAR-COATED FOR MANY INDEPENDENT OWNERS.

Byline: JULIA M. SCOTT Staff Writer

Star sightings and fad diets are part of life in the San Fernando Valley, but so is eating carb-laced, trans fat-packed, sugar-coated doughnuts by the dozen.

As proof, doughnut shops beckon from nearly every corner. There are roughly 400 doughnut shops in the Valley -- roughly one for every 4,145 stomachs.

Within a mile of the intersection of Sherman Way and De Soto Avenue in Winnetka, for instance, 10 shops compete for the patronage of local doughnut-lovers.

``It's an addiction for me -- my coffee and just one doughnut,'' said nanny Grace Degollado, 43, who stops by the Donut Inn after dropping off her charges at school.

``I'm losing weight and I said, No more doughnuts, no more doughnuts, but I passed by here and I said, One more doughnut.''

Who doesn't treat themselves once in a while?

But splurging happens only on one side of the counter. To stay in business, most shop owners run bare-bones operations, working double shifts so they don't have to hire extra help.

Independent doughnut sellers in the Valley are so good at streamlining that they have kept the chains from invading.

Krispy Kreme shuttered half its stores in Southern California after the buzz about its hot doughnuts cooled off. Dunkin' Donuts doesn't have a single shop in the Valley and isn't looking to expand in the Golden State, according to its Web site.

Winchell's, the largest West Coast chain, has just 17 of the roughly 400 doughnut shops in the Valley.

``The small independent doughnut shop operators are able to run a lower overhead,'' said Lincoln Watase, president of Yum Yum Donut Shops, which owns Winchell's. The mom and pop stores don't have to pay managers, administrators and other support staffers like the chains do.

Doing it all

For Kim Thean, owner of K's Donuts at Ventura Boulevard and Fallbrook Avenue, staying in business comes down to simple economics. When a relative works the register, it's free.

``We are family so we don't really care about hours,'' said Thean, 39, who runs the shop with the help of one employee -- his wife, Sokha. ``When you have to hire someone and pay them, it's expensive.''

Thean makes 420 dozen doughnuts a week, a fraction of the 1.2 million doughnuts gobbled down in the Valley every week.

Like many emigres from Cambodia, Thean followed other Cambodians into the doughnut business.

Cambodians created a niche business out of doughnuts beginning with a La Habra store in 1977, according to James Allen and Eugene Turner in ``The Ethnic Quilt.''

``The business was successful, relatives trained with the owner and opened their own shops, and word of these opportunities spread widely within the community,'' the authors write.

But nobody eats doughnuts in Cambodia. The shops are just about economic survival, according to Allen and Turner. Not much English is required to run one, and loans through the Cambodian community made it possible for immigrants to open their own shops.

Thean started working in a Reseda doughnut shop owned by a distant relative at age 17, shortly after he arrived in L.A. He learned to mix batter and fry dough in his father's Woodland Hills shop, which he later bought.

In the store a 10-inch Buddha statue watches over a handful of tables from the top of a humming refrigerator.

Good-luck charms

Behind the cash register are two good-luck charms -- a palm-size gold paper that is covered in obscure characters written by monks and an intricate ink drawing. Both hang next to an occupancy certificate.

Running the shop seven days a week is grueling, but Thean says he doesn't mind the work.

Every day Thean rises when most of us are going to bed, a little after midnight. He measures water and yeast and adds it to a powdery mix that makes raised doughnuts. While it churns, he starts a batch for buttermilk sweets, and then another for old-fashioneds.

About 4 a.m. he dips the dough in bubbling oil, carefully timing each batch one minute per side. Then he douses them with a sugary glaze and slides the still-hot trays into the display case.

When he opens at 5 a.m. the sky is pitch black.

The day laborers march in before dawn, looking for a quick meal they can eat on the curb while waiting for work.

The suits rush in and out as the clock ticks toward 9 a.m., followed by senior citizens who sit down at a table to nibble the sweet dough, sip coffee and chat.

About 10 a.m., Thean's wife relieves him. Sometimes she doesn't show up until afternoon so Thean stays on. The couple's three daughters are too young to work in the store, and Thean isn't sure they ever will.

``I don't know if they'll like it,'' he said, flashing a quick smile below wire-rimmed glasses. ``I'm not going to force them.''

Thean doesn't take days off because when he is not around, nobody bakes doughnuts for him. Instead, he closes on New Year's Day, Christmas and Labor Day. A two-week vacation is out of the question.

Selling doughnuts has allowed the Theans to make payments on a home in West Hollywood and own two cars.

One day Thean wants to invest in real estate, but for now he says he cannot expand until he has relatives who can work in his shop.

The Mong family

Regulars are the lifeblood of doughnut shops. At One Star Donuts, co-owner Charlene Mong recognizes almost all of her customers and remembers many of their orders.

``I know them more than my family,'' said Mong, who is 45 and ends most sentences by giggling. But she doesn't know her customers' names.

For the past 15 years, she has logged 100-hour weeks at the Reseda shop she owns with her husband, Chay.

Mong left Vietnam in 1975 after the U.S. pulled out, leaving her middle-class family vulnerable to communist rule.

She was 15 and fled to a refugee camp in Thailand with her father. An older brother had already left but her mother, ill with cancer, stayed behind and died a few months later.

Mong lived in the refugee camp for a year before settling in Belgium. At 20, she immigrated to the U.S.

Mong met her husband through a mutual friend. They found jobs assembling jewelry at a local factory and slowly raised money to buy a doughnut shop with loans from family and friends.

They chose doughnuts because a friend had a successful shop and because it was cheaper than anything else, said Mong, who pulls back her deep brown hair into a low ponytail.

The Mongs renamed the store One Star Donuts, with a diamond logo.

``We just pick the name,'' said Mong, whose bronze-color eyes float to the top of her pale, oval face. ``We think star is good.''

In the beginning, Mong worked 16-hour days, sleeping between shifts on a pad in the back of the shop. Now she comes in at 5 a.m., after Chay has finished making doughnuts. She sells sweets until closing at 6 p.m.

On weekends, the store closes a few hours early, giving Mong and her husband time to garden in the backyard of their three-bedroom home in Van Nuys.

Mong tells her children that education is the key to success in the U.S. Her daughter, Julie, 21, is studying engineering at the University of California, Irvine.

``That's why she works so hard in school,'' Mong said. ``She knows now she has an opportunity.''

Mong's 17-year-old son, Calvin, wants to go to college, too.

Mong hopes to go back to school to finish her accounting degree, but she knows that is unlikely. The store is just too demanding. Instead, her future hangs in the hands of her children, for whom she has sacrificed her life.

``My children, I'm happy with them,'' Mong said. ``If they succeed, it's going to be OK.''

julia.scott(at)dailynews.com

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CAPTION(S):

4 photos, map

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) Kim Thean, top, owner of K's Donuts on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills, holds some of the fruits of his labor. Above, raspberry filling is inserted into doughnuts at Thean's shop.

(3) Kim Thean fries French cruller doughnuts in vegetable shortening in Woodland Hills. Thean begins his days shortly after midnight, and often works into the afternoon.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer

(4) Charlene Mong operates One Star Donuts in Reseda with her husband, Chay. Charlene logs 100-hour weeks at the shop.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer

Map:

Donut lovers heaven

Gregg Miller/Staff Artist