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If you know doughnuts, you know the pink doughnut box.
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Especially if you're familiar with Southern California, which has hundreds of doughnut shops, most with the pink boxes.
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But while you may recognize the box, you may not know it's central to a story about chasing the American dream.
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The pink box phenomenon all started with a man named Ted.
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Ted Ngoy came to California as a Cambodian refugee in the 1970s.
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He got into the doughnut business and became the owner of dozens of shops.
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Ted sponsored other refugees, taught them the business, and helped them open their own shops.
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Since Ted used the pink boxes, so did everybody else.
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Ted became known as the Doughnut King.
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My name is Mayly Tao, and I am the Doughnut Princess of L.A.
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The Doughnut Princess's great uncle, the one and only Doughnut King, Ted Ngoy.
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He taught Mayly's parents the business in the 1980s, and they started this shop.
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Mayly took it over a few years ago.
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And beyond Mayly, Ted's legacy lives on through, you guessed it, those pink boxes.
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When we came to L.A., my parents owned a doughnut shop for 26 years.
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We use the pink doughnut boxes.
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In the Asian community, red is a lucky color, so therefore, using the pink box, it's no coincidence about it.
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The pink box is overwhelmingly the favorite of the doughnut shop industry.
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That's Len Bell, he should know.
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His company manufactures about 12 to 15 million doughnut boxes every year.
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Cheers!
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While the pink boxes are still an iconic part of the doughnut landscape, owners are putting a new spin on things.
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Mayly makes some of the same doughnuts her parents used to make, but like everything, times are a changin'.
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When I took the business over from my parents, they were using the generic pink boxes that you see everywhere.
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But our doughnuts were not generic, and I needed to reflect that upon our new, upgraded boxes.
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And what does your mom think about that, Mayly?
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My mom does not really approve of the new boxes.
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They're a little bit more expensive, and it's not really what she's used to, but I think it's a sign of new doughnut times.
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Yum, sounds delicious.