How Billy's donuts have become a viral sensation

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At 3:04 pm Saturday, just after closing his father's shop, Billy's Donuts, in Missouri City, for the afternoon, Billy By tweeted this:

"I was trying to let my friends know," Billy said. "I do not know who retweeted it but it became big."

What size? On Sunday afternoon, his tweet had been retweeted more than 150,000 times. Monday morning? More than 260,000 times. To put this in perspective, the 30th tweet most retweeted from the story of Twitter (by the South Korean group BTS) has about 630,000 retweets.

Billy's Donuts is a chain located south of Loop 610 (El Lago, Pearland, Pasadena, Sugar Land and, now, in the City of Missouri). Satharith By, By's father, founded the company more than 20 years ago in Pearland – thus calling him after his son – and oversaw the expansion. Billy's mother became ill a few years ago. To attract attention to her health, Satharith sold the Pasadena store and then the others to her family members.

But the status of Billy's mother has improved and the family has taken over. They opened the newest Billy's Donuts on Thursday. On Saturday, the By family began to worry about its lack of activity. Billy decided to contact friends on Twitter. Then Billy's notifications started; he quickly informed people of the address of the donut shop, which would have opened on Sunday morning.

Billy did not sleep much on Saturday night, so he went to the store around 10 am Sunday to find a line. At one point, the store ran out of donuts and kolaches.

On Monday morning, Billy was interviewed by other local news outlets and was working on a potential spot for CNN, while Twitter representatives were on hand to greet customers. Yes, Twitter They bought the store for the morning, which means everyone's order was on them. (Representatives would not comment on the recording of their presence at the store.) And while Billy was playing with a gracious host, Satharith remained busy at the back and an aunt was working at the cashier. Everything seemed surreal: within 48 hours, this family-owned Cambodian donut shop, located in the city of Missouri, had become the epicenter of social media.

Billy just hopes the virality can last for a while. In fact, he will fly to Europe later today and will be back in two weeks. Maybe someone can step in and handle social media until then.

"It's a little bad timing for all of this," he joked.

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