Food happened during the journey.
Technology has always been home.
I still remember the first time someone introduced me as "the doughnut guy."
People laughed. I laughed too.
But inside, I smiled for a different reason.
Because very few people knew that before doughnuts, before customers, before delivery riders and production schedules, I was writing software.
Technology was my first love. Food simply happened during the journey.
Over the last ten years I built Dough Man Foods from an idea into a real business. Somewhere along the way I became known as an entrepreneur. Then a mentor. Then a business coach. Eventually people stopped asking me about software altogether.
But something interesting happened.
No matter how busy business became, I kept returning to code.
After long days of meetings and operations, I'd still open my laptop late at night to redesign an interface, build an internal tool or experiment with a new AI model.
I wasn't doing it because anyone asked me to. I was doing it because that's what I enjoyed.
Looking back, I realise Dough Man taught me lessons I could never have learnt by staying inside software alone.
Customers don't care about elegant architecture. They care about whether ordering is easy.
Employees don't care whether your database is beautifully normalised. They care whether the system slows them down during a busy shift.
Business has a way of exposing engineers to reality.
Today when I design software, I don't begin with technology. I begin with people.
What frustrates them? What decision takes too long? What information are they missing? Can one screen replace three? Can one click replace five?
Ironically, becoming an entrepreneur made me a better software engineer.
Now, as AI changes the way software is built, I feel like I'm returning home. Not because I'm changing careers. Because I'm returning to the career I never truly left.
Food happened during the journey. Technology has always been home.