Burnie's Sunny Beatson outgrows mother's kitchen to open BeaDoughs Donut cafe

It's been just under a month since 16-year-old Sunny Beatson decided to hire a commercial kitchen space for his booming doughnut business, BeaDoughs Donuts, and already his sales have nearly doubled.

"We're making 350 doughnuts a day here ... at mum's kitchen we could only make, like, 200 max. And we'd be struggling," he said.

The young entrepreneur started making doughnuts during the pandemic as a way to make a bit of extra cash, finding recipes on YouTube, adapting them and selling his creations through local IGAs.

Within weeks his sugary creations had captured the Coast's taste buds, upping the demand and filling the Beatson's home with an endless amount of flour, boxes and chocolate.

"(The kitchen) was just getting too small, the demand was really high," Sunny said.

"I think mum was getting sort of sick of it. Mum's happy now, she's got the kitchen back."

The new space sits in an arcade right at the centre of Burnie's CBD. Already the front is adorned with a brand new set of signs from the print shop across the walkway.

Inside, the store is slowly taking shape, fitted out with cooking equipment, a coffee machine and benches sourced by some savvy Beatson family shoppers.

"We've been a bit bootstrapped with our cashflow - that's some fancy terminology," Sunny said. "Yeah, I've been reading up.

"The first decision was that we needed a bigger kitchen so we could make more. And then I was like, we've already got a shop so we might as well open to the public so we can get walk-ins so obviously we can make more money.

"Now we get most of our sales from people walking in."

Sunny works at the shop six days a week, getting up at four every morning to start cooking and heading home by 3pm to do school work.

The industrious young man doesn't have much time for anything else.

"My friends are right here," he laughs, pointing to his younger brother, Bobby, and father, Cory, working away at the back of the store.

"Pretty sad, but that's how it is."

He said he'd never really liked school, and was happy to have something else to focus on.

"At the beginning of the year I was just in Queensland playing footy - yeah, no way I was thinking of this," he said.

"That's all was focusing on, I didn't even think about business or anything. I didn't care about school. This is way better."

He said he had received an "unbelievable" amount of support from other businesses and the local community, to the point where he had to hire a barista to start making coffee and his nan as an extra pair of hands.

"There's other businesses in Burnie that help me out and give me a bit of advice ... I think dad's probably my biggest mentor at the moment," he said.

"The support from the community has been crazy, everyone's been getting around me."