merely prior and welcome the spotlight on pittsburgh spotlight on pittsburgh is a program about pittsburgh most fascinating people and what they do to make our city an amazing place to live and work when we come back i'll introduce you to laura koch president found our family was drifting apart until we found the connection you have the power to change your child's life the boy's town national hotline can help and welcome back laura thank you so much for joining me on a saturday thank you for having me so what can you tell me about stamp ology oh my goodness where to start so we started about eight years ago and the whole idea is that we want to bring hands on interactive learning to children so it's it's basically stem education in the idea of stem education or steam as they call it now is that the kids are problem solving and they're doing critical thinking while they're learning in science and technical concepts so what we do it's not all a g is we make it super fun so what's more fun than lego and k'nex and i pads and drones and so we use these familiar toys with the children in unfamiliar ways to teach them these educational concepts and so how did you get started i mean tell me your story i guess your back story yes so i have actually owned a couple businesses in the past and when my two little boys well they're not so little anymore i had two little boys eight years ago when we started and i was looking for a business opportunity but at the same time i was trying to find activities for my sons and my older son in particular his name is sebastian  was really into lego bricks and really into building and both my sons are really into history and museums are academic kids and i didn't really have a ton of interest in sports in organized activities so i wanted to find something that was academic but yet social is well and i was challenged i really had a tough time finding too much out there particularly for boys where they could do that and so that's kind of how the idea was born i you know i was watching my son playing with lego xin as i was googling and trying to find activities i had found robotics that you can do there were folks across the country doing birthday parties in engineering i had no idea lego's had gotten over the years and so that was really the impetus you know there's really no nothing from my from my boys to do and i wanted to create something where they could really thrive and we started offering a couple robotics programs  some of the local rec centers here in pittsburgh and it just took off apparently i wasn't the only parent in that situation and so so really just kind of snowballed in grew from there and we started adding  absolutely word from the first minute thing we're just going to open up you know difference now apologies that's right yeah it was really were again in fact in the first three to six months it grew so quickly here in pittsburgh that i started to realize oh my goodness we're on to something here and i started to document everything that i was doing and i wrote what is now what's called our operations manual for our other franchises but about six months nine months and i realized that we had a concept that we could  expand in some way either via licensing or franchising and we really started to develop the franchise then and so how many franchises do you have in place now we have fifty six franchises in where in five different countries wow so you really expanded people in this area so it's been a great place for us to kind of have our roots and i kind of call it the six degrees of pittsburgh seems like a lot of our owners at least the owners here in the u s have some connection back to pittsburgh they've got family here they went to school here and so a lot of them actually found out about sam paul a g here in pittsburgh and then wanted to take it back to whatever city they were now living in that's so what what type of i guess i was going to ask the next question what types of locations to take them on but what are you offering at these are the kind of the same across the board that you know if you go to one is now going to have the same program and says another one yeah that's a good it's a great question so we have set curriculum in place in the curriculum is meant to be both fun and academic so kind of an equal mix so it doesn't feel like school what kind of feels like you're there to have fun so we want all of our locations to sort of have that same feel so we have about sixty different programs that we offer in terms of classes in camps and so all of our locations offer those sixty programs so there's a lot of uniformity there but then when it comes to birthday parties and when it comes to some of the the more later activities there's a little bit of variation but we try to keep as much consistency as we can cross the country now you what you will find differences is some locations are mobile or community based and others have what we call a discovery center so in the u s we have fifty locations and forty five of them are community based meaning they go into schools and rec centers and libraries and they offer all of their programs out in the community five of our locations in the u s soon to be seven actually we've got to the two more that are doing it have a physical discovery center where the children can actually come to them and we do the classes in the camps in the parties there as well but there's also sort of an open area in mordor now exactly for yourselves yeah and the kids can explore and it's all hands on learning in it's it's all different types of activities and we've tried to introduce some technology in there so the kids start to you know they learn they're learning the science they're learning the engineering there but it's all play it's all it's all interactive hands on and since it's a you know it is summer just about you're offering some summer camp activities as well can you tell me a little bit about and what they'll offer out to the community yeah absolutely we're really excited about summer i was actually just talking with my leadership team earlier today we have a ton of sun our summer programs going on all over pittsburgh including a program that's wonderful called summer dreamers down in the in the city of pittsburgh pittsburgh public schools and then we have programs out in the in the suburban areas as well and the kids come in and it's a nice mix of sort of structured activities along with some free time to just sort of explore in express themselves and in our brand new location in bridges bridgeville we actually have an outdoor exploring area yeah so it'll it'll have a little bit of your playground feel but it'll also have you know the  building type activities and some more you know cerebral type activities outside other than just sort of the swings and slides in those types of things well and i think that it's important you know as myself as a mother and if you are you know you want your kid to go outside during the summer when your work or wherever you have to be to to play outside to get in the fresh air one of the still can wow hopefully having an educated experience and not completely just running free for all throughout the summer  absolutely yeah that's kind of what we're going they're going for they're sort of the mix the balance you know they can play outside in and they can run around i'm sure they'll run around and get their energy but then you know there are those activities where they can really sort of engage in really we we try to do as much team work as we can too so when they're outside the hope is that they're not just playing on a swing or doing something by themselves everything we have is team based so we have a big giant swing but it's meant for four or five people to be on at a time so everything sort of collaborative as well and of course no arguing the never argue doing team are great too much it's fun at least it cuts down on that and what age groups are step ology the purpose for their summer camps are appropriate for so the summer camps are four to fourteen are discovery centers that open play go down as young as one as soon as the kids are walking and moving around there's activities for them to do but the summer camps you don't have like the fourteen year olds playing with the four year olds there are fourteen year olds are doing a dance robotics and drones in you know really really cool sort of advanced stuff and our four year olds are there they're doing you know sort of junior engineering or you know maybe  an easier you know story time kind of activities yeah you brought out some models is this some of the stuff that they might encounter snap ology it is yes yes so we have we have a couple different categories  we have six different categories i brought three different with me here the fun the most fun one are themed programs so you can see little guy made a batman here and then another little guy made a spider man so we don't give them a template we show them a picture maybe or honestly it's a superhero they know what that man looks like they just build it from their imagination and it teach them spatial recognition and different things like that so our themed programs are meant to be super fun but at the same time some of them are building in engineering and that kind of thing yeah you have more complicated things now i'm sure that teenagers would like more that's right that's right this is actually a preschool robotics helicopter so a four year old can build this  we obviously have a structured program we give them a lot of guidance but our four five and six year olds are building these it actually connects via bluetooth to a computer and then it'll it'll work it'll actually spin and work and they're learning the gears and all of that kind of stuff there that's certainly more complicated i think than the leaders are used to play with it it is amazing it really truly is amazing what you can do with these toys nowadays and how they've done that i mean lego is an amazing company with what they've wonderful well we'll bring you back out here in a little bit thank you so much laura to find out more please go to pittsburgh dot snap ology dot com when we return we'll bring out the owner of the first dr nyce location ever in pittsburgh sometimes it's hard to see where you're going but you have the power to change your problems all it takes is your life your voice got mor banks and we were talking with some friends about our trip and everyone started mentioning you have to get duct donuts while you're there so we when we got there we finally did and i had you know wasn't a huge fan of the nuts but when i went in and i saw and i smelled the donuts being made and i saw that they were customized the way you wanted them and they were served fresh and warm and it was a fun atmosphere that's how i happened upon duck donuts and that was in two thousand and ten two thousand and ten s o when did you open your pittsburgh location so the years went by and we visit the outer banks for the next five years i think and we are our fascination and our affinity for duck donuts grew as we went back so in twenty fifteen i came home and looked on their site and found out that they were headquartered outside of harrisburg in mechanicsburg and submitted an application and went out and visited their corporate office which is only a few hours away from us and here we are we took about two years to get us up and running finding the right location and we've been there a year this year in june and you're in a percent clear in our st clair directly across from south wales village at the corner four cups in one thousand that's a good location it is up and growing too right  everyone anything from a bare donut to every topping that we have and so what are some of the toppings so we do a seasonal icing where in the midst of for the spring it was key lime we're launching orange for the summer and we've got some standard cinnamon sugar vanilla chocolate we do with all of our fruit ice things have fruit in them so we've got blueberry lemon orange some of the more favorites and we've got graham peanuts  coconut kind of kind of brazil's all of the right things could be used to drizzle so it's it's really it's the possibilities are endless and so is this just for kids that are absolutely not i think i mentioned everybody can be a kid when they come and visit us so it's for everybody and anybody good and so you know what did you like what do you like most about having this kind of franchise in africa and to the communities well i think it's something unique to pittsburgh i think for donut or on an english muffin we do all kinds of express so coffee drinks tea we do a lot of catering in fact donuts and become very popular with weddings corporate events so we're doing a lot of catering as well and the doing so you do catering parties and weddings is there anything else community based that you're involved with one of the things that i really liked about the franchise and they really encouraged was having being part of the community and it was what i was looking for in a business where i could give something back so we have a program called quest gives back where we selected a local charity each month we donate a portion of our our sales to that charity we ask that they you know we want to create awareness the charity as well as you know make a financial contribution so that's been fun and we've done this is our limits so we've done eleven charities so how does crack give back and give back to individual charities or specific they've there's a nomination process which can be found on our web site a doctor on that stock an organization can nominate themselves it's reviewed we select a charity and there is promotions that they do that we do with them where they can come in and you know their signs always posted their information is available and at the end of the month we make a contribution so it's like a fund raising opportunity it is and it's you know really to to i think create awareness for what to some degree there is information available that and also we want to knowledge sixty locations nationwide as far as the west coast we just heard that there was an agreement put together for santiago chile so international now but the other day you know  and he said you might be there might be a second location coming up in the pittsburgh area the word we're going we're looking for spaces we're hoping to have the location of the two up and running sometime next year and so what do you see for summer two thousand and eighteen hopefully we have good weather but you know so we've the business has continued to grow for us we've selected our charities through the month through the months of the summer we want to be more involved in the thirty am to eight pm summer hours so we just extended our hours open every day we can we take online orders we take call ahead orders so there's a variety of ways that they can connect and everything's on our website and  here's the million dollar question what's your favorite didn't play very my first was a maple bacon which is still probably up there for me i was going to ask if he did take it because that's kind of the thing of the year that's become more and more part most popular don't you know  i love the seasonal because i like something that's a little different french toast as one of my favorites made for cinnamon and powdered sugar it's probably my favorite that's pretty good i would agree that that sounds wonderful and the surprise flavors that you know maybe you wouldn't find anywhere else we've made some recommendations to for some different types of ice things but really the concept is to keep it very simple we don't we don't do things like gummy worms and we don't do you know oddball things for donuts it's very simple our store good and is there anything else that i haven't touched on that possibly you would want to elaborate on more i think if you're interested in even if you're not a fan of donuts check us out it's a unique experience i think it touches all the senses when you visit the store and really see the process and the best to get them when there are more and so do you think that in pittsburgh that dach donuts is no you know not just in north carolina you think it's been fully adopted in our area we've been welcomed to because i think there are so many fans that knew the brand so it's been a great year we're so appreciative of the fans and of the people that we've met and the meeting all the new friends that we've made so it's been fun and are you popping in anywhere that will be able to here's something we bet you didn't know nearly half of all cancers can be prevented mostly by making changes in your diet controlling your weight and of course by not smoking does it prevent fifty dot org and get a free thirty day planner filled with  more and we're back and it's my favorite part of the show i mean the interviews were great i'm so glad that i got to know everything about both of your businesses now you guys were neighbors our neighbors have been neighbors close you're close or mega blocks at comparable size so what i'd like to do and i don't even have a timer so i'm just going to have to do this in my head is give you each i had to bring you both together somehow for team work you should have thirty seconds all right we're going to give you ten seconds