This food truck is a treat for your eyes and donut cravings

Just the name of Hank Jawad’s food truck business — Hanky Panky Dinky Donuts — is enough to bring a smile to your face.

Mix in the delicious mini-donuts he cooks up and the endorphin-stimulating artwork that covers his vehicle and, well, get ready for some mini-treat euphoria.

A resident of Canton, Jawad struck food-truck gold at this month’s Ramadan Suhoor Festival in Dearborn as customers waited patiently in lengthy lines to devour his dough-based products.

“We had a lot of first-time customers asking us where we were located, where they could find us — people love what we make,” said Jawad, who is originally from Dearborn.

“And people love our truck. The company that helped us design the artwork — Eight Media — did an amazing job. The owner, Moe Abdullah, even suggested we put the phrase ‘Honk For Hank!’ on the side of the truck and add ‘Dinky’ before ‘Donuts in our name so people knew they were getting mini-donuts. You wouldn’t believe how many people honk at me when I’m driving to and from events.”

Sweet backstory

The history of Hanky Panky Dinky Donuts is as delicious as the sweet treats.

When he was 20, the now-28-year-old Jawad was a server at an Andiamo’s restaurant when he stumbled upon a non-working donut machine that employees used as a foot rest when they were sitting in the backroom during break time.

“The donut machine broke twice, so the manufacturer told my boss they’d give him a $1,000 credit if he returned it,” Jawad recounted. “My boss told me if I could find somebody to buy it for $1,000, he’d give me $250. I replied, ‘How’s this? I’ll buy it from you for $750’.”

Armed with a mechanically-sharp mind, Jawad bought the donut-maker, fixed it and started selling his creations on a small scale before gradually growing his business.

“I started with a trailer that I could haul around behind my Ram pick-up,” Jawad said. “Things were going well, so I invested in the truck last year. When I first bought the truck, it was white and I put a few stickers on it to let people know what we were selling. But I recently collaborated with Eight Media for the artwork upgrade and it looks fabulous.”

‘Level of satisfaction hard to match’

Jawad worked as a mechanical engineer and in the mortgage industry before making a full-time commitment to selling donuts.

“My previous jobs were okay,” he said. “But there’s nothing like seeing the smiles on the faces of kids — and adults, too — when they try our donuts for the first time. There’s this level of satisfaction that is hard to match in the other industries I worked in.”

Jawad’s feel-good story only gets better.

Although the cost of ingredients has increased dramatically since he launched Hanky Panky, he has refused to raise the cost of his products.

“I didn’t come from a family that was really well off, I guess you could say, and I remember going to festivals with five crinkled up one-dollar bills in my pocket, so I was limited as to what I could buy,” he said. “I want to make sure that kids who don’t have a lot of money — kind of like when I was young — can afford our donuts and other items, so our prices haven’t gone up at all.”

The Hanky Panky Dinky Donuts food truck is available for everything from modest-sized kids’ birthday parties to large weddings — and everything in between.

Great value for a great product

The minimum fee for Jawad’s service at an event is $800 (and an additional $200-$300 if the party organizers would like ice cream included) and there is a range of pricing and menu options available.

Interested customers can connect via the business’s Instagram page — or call or text Jawad at 313-442-2048.

Among the variety of mini-donut services include Oreo Cheesecake, Strawberry Cheesecake, Reese’s and old-fashioned powdered donuts.

The prices are incredibly reasonable — and staring at the eye candy-level food truck art is free.

If you would like your business featured on SocialHouseNews.com, please contact Ed Wright at 734-664-4657 or edwright@socialhousenews.com.