August 2026
5 min read
Buzzy Geduld Never Gave Up the Donut Shop
Wall Street made his name. The Donut Pub may tell you more about him.
Buzzy Geduld has had the sort of career that usually produces a very long biography. There was Wall Street. Herzog Heine Geduld, the trading firm he helped build into one of Wall Street’s leading trading firms. Its eventual sale to Merrill Lynch. By any measure, a formidable career.
And then there are the donuts.
In 1964, Buzzy and his brother opened The Donut Pub on West 14th Street in Manhattan. His career eventually took him quite far from the donut counter. He kept the shop anyway. The more you understand Buzzy, the less surprising that decision seems.
He has a wonderfully efficient way of looking at things.
I learned this when I once brought him a question I had been agonizing over: Should I leave the company I worked for and start my own private-aviation firm? Buzzy’s analysis was brief.
“Would you make more money doing it by yourself?”
Buzzy Geduld
On Advice
No five-point plan. No TED Talk about following your dreams.
Then came another question. “Why private jets?” I wasn’t expecting it. And I was a little nervous about my answer. I didn’t have a data-driven explanation or some grand problem in the industry I intended to solve. I just knew I had finally found something I was exceptionally good at. Private aviation, with its rapid changes, demanding requests and constant problem-solving, works remarkably well with my ADHD brain.
Buzzy didn’t need a presentation. He wanted to know whether I understood why I was doing what I was doing.
That’s very Buzzy. Strip away the noise. Get to the point.
Which may also explain the donut shop. Buzzy has described The Donut Pub as a source of independence. However successful he became elsewhere, there was something reassuring about having another way to earn a living. Something that was his.
And during his Wall Street years, those donuts served another purpose. While financial firms could spend extraordinary sums entertaining clients, Buzzy sent boxes of donuts to trading desks. People remembered them.
It’s a small detail, but possibly my favorite Buzzy story. A man operating at the highest levels of Wall Street understood that sometimes the most effective way into the room costs less than dinner. He understood people. And he has always seemed genuinely proud of the shop.
I remember Buzzy once inviting me to his Fourth of July barbecue in the Hamptons. Amid everything you’d expect from a summer holiday out East, there was one detail I loved: a Donut Pub flag, flying proudly above it all. Of course there was.
Here was a man who had reached the upper levels of Wall Street, hosting a Fourth of July party in the Hamptons, and the flag he wanted flying was for his donut shop. That image has stayed with me. Maybe because it says more about Buzzy than a list of accomplishments ever could.
The Donut Pub was never merely the business he happened to keep after becoming successful. It remained part of who he was and something he was visibly proud to put his name behind.
The Person Behind The Itinerary
“Buzzy became one of my clients through private aviation, but years later, it isn’t the flights I remember most. It’s the conversations.”
That is one of the quieter privileges of this business: getting to know the person behind the itinerary.
With Buzzy, I remember the directness. The questions. And, yes, the donuts.
Wall Street tells you Buzzy Geduld was successful.
The Donut Pub tells you something more interesting.
He never forgot the value of having something that was his.
Written by Vanesa Cueto, Founder
