Merch Plan

The three decisions on the table

• What to launch first — recommendation: cap + tee + sticker, not outerwear.
• What the quarter-zip is for — recommendation: staff uniform first, retail only via presale.
• Which logo goes on the chest — recommendation: the solid badge, not the thin arched wordmark.

Merch purchase mix

Quarter-zip is not a tracked category. At best it lives inside that 11.5% sweatshirt slice — and it is the priciest, slowest-turning item in it. Tees and hats together account for 81% of the four categories reported here.

Read this carefully. These four percentages are quoted accurately from a Food Institute write-up of Square data, but that article gives no sample size, no geography, no unit-vs-revenue denominator and no measurement period for the mix itself — the "Q3 2025" label in the piece belongs to its merchant-adoption stats, not to these numbers. Treat it as directional context for a tee/hat-led pilot, not as an allocation model. Stickers are not in this dataset at all, so no combination that includes a sticker can be summed to 81%.

Who merch works for

Square's data covers bars, breweries, cafés and restaurants — 56.5% of breweries, 22.9% of cafés and 17% of bars now sell merch. But the qualifier in the same writeup matters more than the headline:

"Merchandise makes sense for edgy, cool restaurants, cafes, breweries, and coffeehouses. It also makes sense if the business is located in a tourism destination."

Headwind Golden Glaze is seven neighborhood shops in DFW. Not a tourist landmark people buy a souvenir of — yet. That is the honest constraint on how big this line can get in year one.

Voodoo Doughnut 47 SKUs Zero quarter-zips

Probably the most merch-successful independent donut brand in America. Their entire ladder:

Read: the range is weighted toward $20 tees and cheap impulse items, and the brand best positioned to charge $65 for outerwear doesn't sell a quarter-zip at all — it stops at $55. That ceiling is the useful signal.

Evidence quality: a catalog proves what a brand chooses to offer, not what customers buy. Read this as how an experienced operator structures a range and where they cap price — not as sales data. The Square figures above are the only genuine demand data on this page.

Dutch Bros 81 SKUs One quarter-zip

Read: a quarter-zip can work in this category — at $65, as the second-priciest item in the line, backed by 1,000+ locations and a genuine cult. It is the flex you earn, not the thing you open with. Note that 43% of their catalog is under $10.

Randy's Donuts Icon-led

Launched merch with t-shirts and hats, and has since added hoodies, sweatshirts, caps, mugs and magnets. Their entire merch equity is the giant donut on the roof — an icon, not a slogan. People buy Randy's merch as proof they were at an L.A. landmark.

Read: the durable premium in food merch comes from identity and iconography, not from a line of text.

Everyday badge cap Lead

Dark chocolate 5-panel or low-profile dad cap, flat embroidery or woven patch. Front badge approx 2.35 in W x 2.00 in H. One adjustable size — the cleanest bridge between brand visibility and low sizing complexity.

Product-led donut tee

Pepper / washed black tee, 2-colour screen print or DTF. Front left chest approx 3.5 in W; back print approx 10.5 in W x 13 in H. The back graphic is built from verified menu items — glazed, chocolate, sprinkles, cinnamon sugar, jelly filled, apple fritter, kolache, coffee — not from invented bestsellers.

Golden Era quarter-zip Sample / preorder only

Espresso heavyweight fleece, long sleeve. Front embroidery approx 2.4 in W; back graphic approx 10 in W x 7 in H. Fixes the problems in the original proof: darker body, solid chest badge, larger back, higher contrast. Still the wrong thing to open inventory with.

Sticker companion

3 in die-cut vinyl or a 3 x 4 in sheet, full-colour digital print. The badge route is the one to run — a bare donut doesn't attribute to Golden Glaze. Cheap and it advertises, but it is still inventory.

What these are not

• Not production files. Not digitized. Not stitch-ready.
• Not official logo art — the badge is a concept simplification of existing local assets and needs Jack's approval as a mark before it goes on anything.
• Dimensions are provisional and change once a blank is selected and its decoration constraints (max stitch count, print area, colour count) are known.
• Garment colour names — dark chocolate, espresso, pepper — are directions, not blank SKUs.

Thin type and small menu copy will not survive embroidery at these sizes; that is a digitizing review, not a drawing decision.

These aren't three options

Rows 1 and 3 carry an identical chest logo, and all three backs are the same lockup with minor weight and colour shifts. The only real decision on the sheet is which back treatment — and row 3 is the pick, because it is the only version with enough type weight to survive on a cream body.

The counter math at the register

A Golden Glaze customer is spending $15–25 on a dozen donuts. A $65 quarter-zip asks them to roughly triple their ticket on an impulse buy. A $28 tee is an easy yes in that line. A $65 piece of outerwear is a considered purchase — and considered purchases don't happen in a donut queue.

Phase 2 — the quarter-zip, demoted not killed

1. Staff uniform first, in a darker body. The team wearing it across seven shops every day is better advertising than forty units sitting in a stockroom.
2. Retail by presale only. Post it, collect orders, then order exactly what sold. Zero inventory risk, and you learn whether demand is real before spending a dollar.
3. Clear ~40 units on presale → do a real run. Doesn't clear → you just saved roughly $1,500 and learned something.

Open questions

• Staff uniform or retail drop? Still unanswered, and it changes the whole design call — staff means logo-forward, darker body, cheapest durable blank; retail means the back graphic is the product and should be bigger and louder.
• Embroidery or DTF? The chest detail implies embroidery, the back implies print. Running both on one garment is a real cost jump and should be priced before approval.
• Blank weight and brand? A heavyweight fleece versus a thin one is the whole quality perception at a $50+ price point.

Note on the slogan

An earlier verbal note called "Living My ___ Era" a fading 2023 trend. On checking, no supporting data was found either way — treat that as opinion, not a finding. The sizing and price-point arguments above are the ones backed by numbers.