In naming our company, we wanted to find a name that reflected where we have been as well as clearly state where we are going. Our name pays tribute our family’s history and gives homage to our industry’s celebrated roots.

My grandparents, Ronald Armes and Nancy Gilliam, met in Los Angeles. Nancy attended Beverly Hills High School in the early 1930s. Her father worked in a construction contracting. We like to say our family built that town . . . literally.

Those were the days when the Hollywood studios operated as “movie factories,” producing movies that defined genres, pioneered techniques, and laid the foundation for today’s work. They were the movie factories that brought audiences Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, Singing in the Rain, and The Jazz Singer.

Ronald was a doughnut maker dispatched to Los Angeles to open a new shop in downtown Los Angeles during that same time. He and Nancy met, married, and eventually moved east.

Ronald was a doughnut maker his entire life. His shops were always called the Armes Doughnut Factory. He was a well-respected and well-liked local business man. His obituary reminds us that he was remembered as “one of the original developers of the yeast-raised doughnut and as a pioneer of the retail doughnut shop concept. He introduced and made yeast-raised, glazed doughnuts at the 1929 Chicago World Fair.”

In honor of my grandparents, and in honor of the history of our industry, we became the Armes Movie Factory.