Lady Glaze Doughnuts finds sweet success with help from Laurier business students

July 9, 2025

A fourth-year Marketing class project at Wilfrid Laurier University has resulted in a new brand strategy for one local small business – and a summer job in digital marketing for one student.

Chef, entrepreneur, and owner of Lady Glaze Doughnuts Mark Brown was invited to BU459 Marketing and Social Networks by Osama Butt, assistant professor of Marketing, who worked with Laurier’s Community and Workplace Partnerships team to bring a real-world business problem into the classroom. This model has proven successful, with the community and workplace partnership team also connecting local businesses, such as Four All Ice Cream and Enova Power, with students in previous terms.

“When students work on real-life projects in class, they feel like consultants,” says Butt. “It really boosts their creativity and engagement. And when we are engaged in our community, it shows local businesses that our students are more than just customers.”

Brown was looking to differentiate Lady Glaze from mass-produced doughnuts found at large chains and restaurants.

Lady Glaze opened in 2019, four months before the COVID-19 pandemic forced Brown to pivot to a delivery-only model. Today, there are three locations in Kitchener, Cambridge and Guelph, as well as a food truck used for charity and corporate events. With so much time and energy spent on the resilience and growth of his business in its early years, Brown did not focus on building a brand strategy. That’s where Laurier students came in.

As part of the work-integrated learning assignment, students developed customized strategic marketing plans.

Fourth-year Bachelor of Business Administration and Criminology student Olivia Kostopoulos’s group recommended expanding to TikTok and increasing the frequency of posts on Instagram. They also suggested highlighting Brown’s culinary background and commitment to using local, Canadian ingredients.

“Lady Glaze uses local ingredients like fresh Ontario fruit and Shaw’s Ice Cream in Tillsonburg, which is part of their value proposition,” says Kostopoulos. “This is important to showcase, as it really speaks to the quality of the product.” 

The ability for students to engage with the business was key to the plan. “Being so close to home, we could actually go visit the business to get a deeper sense of it,” says Kostopoulos. “And we got to ask Mark questions throughout the process, which was unique.”

Brown incorporated many of the students’ suggestions into a new brand plan for the business.

He was so impressed that when the time came to bring in a new employee to help implement his plan, he tapped Laurier again, interviewing several students and eventually hiring Kostopoulos. She has been working with Lady Glaze for two months and is already making a positive impact.

“She’s put together a great plan in terms of what each social channel is best used for and is planning our content calendar,” says Brown. “The consistency that she’s bringing to social media is driving engagement and awareness and getting people in the door, which is exactly what we needed.”