Houstonians freak out as scary clowns make unexpected doughnut deliveries A Hurts Donut scary clown makes doughnut deliveries in downtown Houston

Hurts Donuts Katy General Manager Matt Whitney donned a scary clown costume Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018 to make deliveries to unsuspecting Houstonians in Downtown. Hurts Donuts Katy General Manager Matt Whitney donned a scary clown costume Thursday, Oct. 18, 2018 to make deliveries to unsuspecting Houstonians in Downtown. Photo: Michelle Iracheta/The Houston Chronicle Photo: Michelle Iracheta/The Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 42 Caption Close Houstonians freak out as scary clowns make unexpected doughnut deliveries 1 / 42 Back to Gallery

Matt Whitney hops out of a black truck parked in midtown carrying a box of Hurts Donuts and waves a white-gloved hand toward a law office across the street. But the 42-year-old isn't dressed as himself Thursday.

Just moments prior, Whitney underwent a transformation. The doughnut delivery is one of the first of the day and Whitney is dressed as a mixture of a Stephen King classic villain, Pennywise the Clown from the movie IT, the 1990 version and the 2017 re-adaptation starring Bill Skarsgård. Whitney and his driver, Hurts Donut - Katy General Manager Layne Long, just call him the "scary clown."

Since the team at Hurts Donut – Katy announced in September it was going to start the scary clown prank beginning in October – the business' phones rang off the hook and the team sorted through thousands of messages and voicemails. The Katy doughnut shop was so inundated with calls, they kept pushing back delivery dates. Eventually, they had scheduled their deliveries in the greater Houston area into neighborhood blocks: Energy Corridor, Pearland, The Woodlands... etc.

But then they couldn't find a clown.

"We put an ad out, a listing for a scary clown and nobody showed up," doughnut shop owner Whitney says. "We didn't get any hits on it. We were surprised. I guess nobody wanted to be a scary clown."

He theorizes potential 'scary clowns' might have been afraid of taking the job after a social media posting garnered a lot of online attention and suggested that a clown delivering doughnuts in Texas might warrant someone sticking a gun in their face.

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On Thursday, Whitney and Long walk toward Weston Legal on West Gray ready to meet Daisy Guevarra, a legal assistant, who according to the doughnut shop called in the prank on the office.

Holding a red balloon, Whitney is silent as he waits to be escorted into the office building. He's silent as he's moving toward his target and he's silent when people yell at him from across the street or ask him direct questions.

A man across Main Street downtown yells at Whitney as he walks by, "You're going to scare someone with that, man." Others pull out their iPhones and snap photos and videos to share later with their friends on social media. Whitney doesn't flinch.

As he hands a box of doughnuts to Hannah Jung, a legal assistant at Weston Legal, he's silent underneath the white perpetual half-smile, half-sneer Pennywise mask and unless you asked him later, you'd never know that he thinks of himself as "a nice clown."

"I don't know why people are afraid of clowns," Whitney says. "Personally, I don't have any fear of clowns, but I don't know. Somebody on Facebook said that all clowns are scary. What about nice clowns? So I don't know why they're scared of clowns."

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He then admits that he gets a kick out scaring people and that underneath the mask he's been smiling and laughing the entire time.

"Today was actually fun walking downtown, because usually the deliveries we've done so far, we've kind of just piled out, get into a place and you're not really around people," he says. "Just to see the people on the street and stuff is funny. You can't tell that I'm smiling and laughing underneath this mask."

After the deliveries, Whitney takes off his mask. Never did he imagine that he'd end up walking the streets of downtown Houston delivering doughnuts dressed up as a scary clown. When his college friend Tim Clegg, who founded the Katy doughnut shop, told Whitney about Hurts Donut four years ago to join him, Whitney said, "No way."

Why would he?

He had "a real job" as a vice president of a production company in Tennessee. But always the entrepreneur that he was, he felt that itch he wanted to scratch. He wanted to be his own boss again, so he eventually did join up with Clegg, a franchisor. And he has no regrets, he says.

"The only thing that's tough is the 24 hours," he says. "It's more challenging than I anticipated it to be."

To be a Hurts Donut clown is rough living. To be a Hurts Donut owner is even rougher.

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Long says she was pushing for Whitney to be the clown from the get-go: it saves money. Whitney has been making it to the shop around 6 a.m. and leaving every day between 10 to 11 p.m., some days closer to midnight all while making deliveries throughout the greater Houston area spread between a morning, afternoon and evening shift. Deliveries began on Wednesday, Oct. 17 and will run through Halloween and so far Whitney is it. He's the clown. One Katy store is booked through the rest of October for all of Houston.

The cost for the scary clown service is $50 and includes one dozen doughnuts, the scary clown that delivers the doughnuts to the person of your choosing and the Hurts Donut ambulance. In downtown, parking an ambulance and delivering doughnuts would have been "a nightmare," Whitney says.

"I think if we do it again next year, which I think we probably will, we'll just hire somebody and tell them, you got to be there, this is what you're doing," Whitney says. "Had we been a little more prepared for it and knowing what we know, I think we can do twice the deliveries for the entire month."