Hannah Jewell's Blog

Alumnus Richard Guidry, 25, and current Whitewater senior, Leigh Olszewski, 21, have broken the status quo to fulfill their dream of opening two businesses: a donut shop and a farm.

Guidry, an integrated science and business major, quit work and Olszewski, an entrepreneurship and business management major, dropped out of school to put all their time and money into opening Go Nutz Donuts and Future Tech Farms.

Go Nutz Donuts is a consumer inspired donut making food truck. A consumer can ask for a specific flavor of donut and Go Nutz Donuts will make it. Guidry and Olszewski were inspired when traveling in North Carolina and decided to take the idea back to Whitewater.

Go Nutz Donuts is a partnered franchise wanting to expand throughout the whole Midwest.

The company will start in Whitewater to test and expand as it grows and figures out processes.

Guidry and Olszewski are optimistic to add in a mobile app and delivery service via bike peddlers after a high return on investment.

Their other business is more complex. Future Tech Farms is an aquaponics and hydroponics farming business. “We grow contra seasonal fruits and vegetables so things that cannot be grown in the winter can be,” said Olszewski.

The company will create systems that will grow produce and sell these systems to grocery stores and consumers and also use the systems for their regional distribution network set to start in the Chicago-land area. The types of produce grown will be based off of local demand.

Being a part of the campus organization Enactus lead Guidry and Olszewski to the creation of Future Tech. “We were helping some students in Honduras who came up with the idea of hydroponics and we helped them find the funding and gathered the materials,” said Olszewski.

“We started to research more into our markets and essentially found out that it is a feasible idea here,” said Olszewski.  “We added in a couple more steps because me have more access to technology here and other resources that we weren’t able to teach them down in Honduras.”

Similar to Go Nutz, production will begin in Whitewater and branch out as the company grows.

Typical when starting a new business, Guidry and Olszewski are facing funding issues. The business partners are looking for investors to get Future Tech in motion. Small business development center, SBDC, is working alongside the pair with funding for Go Nutz Donuts. Once Go Nutz Donuts brings in more profit, some money will be sent to fund Future Tech.

“Future Tech is a huge amount of money whereas Go Nutz is something where we are trying to get it started and get it moving so we can use some of that money to fund Future Tech,” said Olszewski.