A warm, sweet aroma fills the air as customers take bites into fresh, hot beignets with an airy melt-in-your-mouth dough. Le Petite Beignet owners Michael and Michiyo Johnson go through 70 pounds of powdered sugar each month to give each hot treat a sweet flourish on top.
The Johnsons had their first date at One Love Cafe in Gainesville, and Michael said he instantly thought, “This is my person.” They married in November 2023.
Michiyo Johnson, a 48-year-old retired chiropractor, dreamed of opening a doughnut truck with crazy flavors. Soon afterward, doughnut trucks like Halo Potato Donuts ended up becoming more common. Although she already had a name picked out — “Damn Good Donuts” — the increasing commonality caused her to switch gears.
“You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a doughnut truck,” Michael Johnson said.
The pair opened Le Petite Beignet in June out of a small trailer attached to their silver Jeep Wrangler. Not even a year later, the Johnsons sold their 10,000th beignet this spring.
Neither came from New Orleans, the home of the famous Cafe du Monde beignets, though they visited separately before they were together. The closest thing they have to a culinary background is Michiyo Johnson’s father, who owned Japanese restaurants in California, where she grew up.
The Johnsons came up with their unique recipe for beignet dough and began using the kitchen at Working Food, which is a nonprofit kitchen used by over 40 food trucks and businesses.
The couple pulled into the Working Food parking lot just after 7 p.m. Feb. 26 to unload ingredients and prepare beignet dough. Flood lights barely illuminated the building’s exterior, casting an eerie glow. The Johnsons would rather make the dough in the daytime, but competition over the schedule at Working Food means they sometimes get stuck with the late shift.
The process of dough making begins with “mise en place” — or putting everything in its place. They raise the air conditioning to a stifling 80 degrees so the dough rises properly. Michael Johnson set out 10 metal bowls alongside two silver KitchenAid stand mixers. It was their first night with a second mixer, and they were excited to see how much it would speed up their dough-making.
Michael Johnson added yeast to the bowls as they started to prepare 10 batches of dough. They each know the recipe by heart and worked together in sync. They experimented with half a dozen different recipes to create what they consider the perfect beignet, but the menu is still expanding.
In the fall, they sold pumpkin spice beignets. Now, they have new takes on beignets, like jalapeño cheddar, rosemary sea salt and chive with cream cheese. To minimize food waste in the cutting stage, the Johnsons began to sell beignet bites out of the excess dough. Le Petite Beignet also sells coffee and hot chocolate, as well as their hybrid hot chocolate coffee.
Michael Johnson chopped blocks of butter into large, square pads, melting just the right amount for each batch of dough. Michiyo cracked eggs against the metal countertop. Despite rising egg costs, the Johnsons haven’t raised prices.
The Johnsons make dough about three times each month. The dough can sit in the freezer for up to four weeks, but they usually have used it up long before.
“How many hours do you think we spend in this kitchen?” Michael Johnson asked.
“Oh, God,” his wife said.
“Too many,” Michael Johnson responded.
Michael Johnson moved each batch to the stand mixers one by one. The whirring motors drowned out the sound of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” playing from Michiyo Johnson’s phone.
So far, the Johnsons’ business has been going well. At the AUK Market’s Book and Art Faire in August, they had a nonstop 20-person line. Despite being 30 minutes behind due to an issue with their propane tank, they managed to sell 550 beignets in four hours, making it their best-selling day yet. They typically sell around 300.
Figuring out the right number of beignets to bring to each event is a delicate decision. On days they have leftover dough, which can’t be refrozen, they sometimes fry up the extra beignets and bring them to fire stations or to St. Francis House, which serves people experiencing homelessness.
“The best jobs are ones where it's just a complete blur,” Michael said. “There's constant people, constant line and then just a flurry of motion. By the time we look up, four hours have gone by, and we’re almost sold out. I’m like, ‘What just happened?’”
Back in the kitchen, Michael Johnson removed the dough from the stand mixers and slid it over to Michiyo Johnson, who kneaded each volleyball-sized chunk by hand. She pushed and pulled, smacked and shaped.
After kneading, Michiyo Johnson plunked the dough back in its bowl and covered it with plastic wrap to rise for two hours. Once all ten batches were in the rising stage, they cleaned up the excess flour and scrubbed the countertops to prepare for stage two.
Once the dough was done rising, Michael and Michiyo Johnson were back in action.
They brought out the dough sheeter, a hand cranked device that rolls the dough into sheets of uniform thickness. Before they spent about $550 on it, they used rolling pins. They also have a contraption called a five-wheel pastry cutter, which makes even lines on the dough for Michiyo Johnson to follow as she slices it by hand.
On Fat Tuesday, the Johnsons rode up to Cypress & Grove Brewing Co. for a Mardi Gras celebration. Attached to their Jeep was the tiny wagon with an arched roof and stretched-out awning. They cranked up the generator, heated the oil and stood up the A-frame menu sign. With the couple squeezed into their tiny food trailer, they each found their spots. One of them fried up beignets while the other manned the register. Le Petite Beignet was open for business.
Mardi Gras was the perfect opportunity for Le Petite Beignet to show skeptical New Orleanians and Cafe du Monde devotees how they compare.
“One of the most satisfying things is when people are from New Orleans… and they say ‘I’m gonna be judging you,’” Michael Johnson said. “When they come back and they say it was perfect.”
Gary McGill, a 69-year-old professor and senior associate dean at the Warrington College of Business, is one such devotee. He said he’s eaten hundreds of Cafe du Monde beignets over the past 25 years, and he never had a decent one outside the New Orleans hotspot. But when he finished his order from Le Petite Beignet, he went to give the Johnsons his compliments.
“They’ve got the secret sauce, and they made them perfect — just like the original,” McGill said.
Families and couples who have been following Le Petite Beignet online also made appearances at the event, desperate for a taste. Michael and Michiyo Johnson have amassed more than 1,000 followers on Facebook.
Two things that Le Petite Beignet’s customers seemed to agree on was that the beignets are hot — and they would be coming back for more.
Contact Corey Fiske at cfiske@alligator.org. Follow him on X @coreyfiske7.
