NYC's 'Baklava Guy' Brings In $20K A Month Selling Turkish Pastries
Roy Donk, a recovered addict and high school dropout, built Good Baklava into a $20K+/month business by combining masterful sales performance with a premium product sourced from Turkish suppliers. He employs unconventional street vending tactics alongside traditional wholesale and e-commerce channels, achieving 60% gross margins through viral marketing and strategic high-traffic location placement.
Summary
Roy Donk is the founder of Good Baklava, a Turkish pastry business generating $20,000+ monthly in revenue. Roy's background includes being a middle school dropout, struggling with drug addiction, and experiencing homelessness while living in a 1989 Dodge Ram van. After achieving over 5 years of sobriety and accumulating $20,000 in debt, he discovered baklava as a side hustle in 2021.
The business originated as a joke when Roy was considering what to sell at a fish concert. A friend dismissed the baklava idea, which motivated Roy to prove him wrong. He purchased three boxes of mass-produced baklava for $50, sold them at a fish concert parking lot within 90 minutes, and generated a $100 profit. This initial success convinced him the concept had potential.
Roy's product strategy centers on quality differentiation. Rather than manufacturing baklava himself, he sources fully assembled, frozen trays from a Turkish supplier he discovered in Patterson, New Jersey over 4.5 years ago. The baklava is imported in shipping containers every 25 days from Turkey, then baked locally. The product contains only seven ingredients (flour, water, egg, salt, clarified butter, sugar, lemon, and premium Turkish pistachios) compared to mass-produced versions with 40+ unpronounceable ingredients. Roy has visited the Turkish factory three times and built a strong relationship with suppliers who appreciate his unconventional distribution methods.
The business operates across four primary channels: unconventional vending (parks, beaches, music festivals), traditional local street vending, wholesale distribution to cafes/bagel shops/grocery stores, and e-commerce through goodbaklava.net. His best performing channel is NYC Christmas markets (November-December), where pricing reaches 3 for $15 and 6 for $25. The business achieves 60% gross margins across all channels, with best months reaching $70,000 (December 2025) and worst months around $8-10K (January 2025), yielding a blended average of $20K+ monthly.
Roy's sales approach emphasizes performance and audience engagement. He describes his technique as 'performance sales' where winning the audience equals making the sale. He's refined his pitch over five years through constant testing of different keywords, approaches, and sales intros. His unconventional vending often includes a humorous bit addressing the frequent question: 'Is there drugs in it?' (attributed to the bright green Turkish pistachios). He's almost been arrested for selling baklava due to its vibrant green color.
Marketing strategy focuses on low-cost viral growth. Rather than paid advertising, Roy invests in paying someone $50 to film him giving away thousands of pieces of baklava at high-traffic events, then edits and distributes the footage to generate PR and publicity. He describes this as creating a 'staircase to the next step' by injecting the product into high-eyeball locations and letting virality compound.
Operationally, the team includes three employees in the Philippines handling design, illustration, coordination, and ordering—tasks Roy considers more talented than his own capabilities. Operational costs consume 25-30% of gross revenue. Roy hasn't paid himself a salary yet but projects a $4,000 monthly take-home once the business stabilizes.
Roy frames his business success within his personal recovery narrative. He emphasizes that unlike entrepreneurs with family financial support, he built this from zero after sobriety, paying off $20,000 in debt, and acquiring skills systematically. He remains grateful for his past struggles, viewing them as motivation and context for his current success. His parents, he notes, appear proud of his transformation.
Key Insights
- Roy discovered the baklava business idea as a joke at a fish concert in 2021 while 6 months sober and nearly broke, initially spending $50 on three boxes of mass-produced baklava and generating a $100 profit in 90 minutes, which convinced him the concept could scale
- The baklava is not manufactured in-house but sourced frozen and fully assembled from a Turkish supplier every 25 days via shipping container, which Roy discovered randomly in Patterson, New Jersey 4.5 years ago and has since become one of their biggest customers
- Roy's marketing strategy deliberately avoids paid advertising by instead paying someone $50 to film viral moments of him giving away thousands of pieces at high-traffic events, using the resulting PR and publicity as his primary customer acquisition channel rather than traditional marketing spend
- The baklava's bright green Turkish pistachios frequently trigger suspicion from customers and law enforcement who believe the product contains drugs, with one Atlantic City police officer explicitly accusing Roy of selling drugs due to the color intensity
- The business achieves 60% gross margins across four channels (unconventional vending, local vending, wholesale, e-commerce) with best months reaching $70,000 and a blended average of $20K+ monthly, despite Roy not having paid himself a salary and allocating 25-30% of gross revenue to operational costs
Topics
Transcript
[0:00] I'm a high school dropout. I'm a middle school dropout. I never went to college. I got addicted to drugs at a young age. I kind of ruined my nose. I wrecked my life several times. And this is my ticket out and I'm going to ride the wave as long as I can. I'm Roy. Roy Donk. I started Good Baklava. Baklava Sportale. No drugs. >> I have a background in marketing, culinary arts, drug addiction, and everything in between. I'd say we sell [0:30] baklava in the most fun, unexpected places when they would never expect it. >> So good. >> Hey, excuse me. Have you guys ever bought baklava of a van before? >> Good. Thank…
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