New York’s Top Doughnut Pop-Up Is Opening a Bakery

A doughnut stuffed with luxurious ube cream is just one of the items on the Kora menu that has made the pop-up so popular. Since launching in 2020, Kora, started by Eleven Madison Park and Union Square Hospitality alums, Kimberly Camara and co-founder Kevin Borja, are opening a permanent bakery for their Filipino American treats in Sunnyside, Queens. They’ve signed a lease at 45-12 Greenpoint Avenue, and have launched a Kickstarter to help them get to the finish line by end of year.

The forthcoming 2,100 square-foot space includes seating and enables more spontaneity. With the new Kora bakery, doughnuts — and more of them — will certainly be at the forefront, but they’re looking forward to spreading beyond them. Laminated pastries will be added to the menu, with flavors that continue to mix Kora’s signature “Filipino flair” with flavors that represent Queens at large. From the start, the bakery has been personal, named after Camara’s grandmother, with recipes that tell a story, like a flan doughnut, that pulls from a recipe she found in a cookbook after her passing.

Camara began making doughnuts out of her apartment, quickly growing to a waitlist of 800 in its first couple of months, Eater reported in 2020. By 2021, Eater reported the waitlist had ballooned to 10,000. Eventually, she and Borja relocated to various commercial kitchens. Until they open, the duo produce doughnuts in a Sunnyside kitchen, with orders for pick-up out of Alewife Brewing.

“We felt like these last few years, we weren’t able to give the full experience to our customers and allow the accessibility that we had always hoped for. We always dreamed of having people just being able to come in without having to preorder and just be able to purchase whatever they want,” says Camara.

While the blink-and-you-missed-it online ordering drops are part of what has made the pop-up bakery so sought-after, “there’s this idea that we're doing it to be exclusive,” says Borja. In reality, it is simply the only format they’ve been able to make work with a skeleton crew without outside investors.

Camara and Borja see their bakery as an opportunity to act as a community hub that’s flexible to what the area needs, whether it’s coffee, doughnuts, or breakfast sandwiches. Their bakery could help fill the doughnut-sized hole left in Sunnyside’s daytime options when Alpha Donuts — also known for its breakfast — closed last year after five decades.

Kora’s founders took their time signing a lease. While they weighed opening a storefront in Manhattan, the borough where they worked in restaurants, it was important to them to remain in Queens where they’ve built an audience. Kora will join other destination bakeries in the area, like the recently-opened Somedays in Long Island City, bringing intricate spins on pastry classics.

“It’s honestly very scary and daunting to take this big next step, not only from a financial perspective... but going at the right pace to not sacrifice what people want us, which is the quality, the uniqueness,” says Borja. “I always say, if the idea was to get rich, quick, we would have moved a lot differently from the beginning.”

The plan is for Sunnyside to operate as a sort of flagship hub for production, with the opportunity to grow to other outposts in the years to come. Borja says: “We’re in it for the longevity of the brand, as opposed to a quick strike of virality.”