By: Chris Buckley
Updated: Fri 4:11 AM, Oct 24, 2014

RENO, NV (KOLO 8 NEWS NOW) – In May, Rounds Bakery co-owners Anton Novak and Sean Cary introduced a new item to their menu of baked goods.

“It’s a croissant-donut pastry hybrid,” Cary said. “I take laminated croissant dough and cut it into a donut shape and then it’s deep fried and glazed. We do a variety of fillings and toppings here.”

He says they’ve always called the pastry a croissant donut. But many people know the flaky treat as a cronut – the name registered and trademarked to star pastry chef Dominique Ansel.

“We’ve not been using that term because we’re aware it’s trademarked,” Cary said. “But the problem is everybody refers to them as cronuts and we can’t be responsible for what customers choose to call it.”

Last week he received a letter from a New York law firm.

“It was from Dominique Ansel’s lawyers,” Cary said. “It’s a cease and desist letter saying we immediately have to stop using the word cronut.”

So they decided to issue an apology. On Twitter.

“We took to the Twitterverse and issued an apology,” Cary said. “I drew Mr. Ansel a nice card using my wax drawing sticks because we couldn’t call them crayons. I cut myself opening the letter so I had to put an adhesive bandage on because we can’t call them band-aids.”

The tweets garnered a lot of online attention under #notacronut

“People have been coming in here, calling the store, coming up with their own tweets,” Cary said. “We had one person saying she was going to make dinner in her slow cooker since she couldn’t say Crock Pot.”

The ongoing barrage appeared on sites like Jezebel but the bakery hasn’t responded.

“We keep hoping something is going to be said,” Cary said. “But we haven’t received a response yet. Frankly we’re not the only bakery that this has happened to so I was shocked to find out we were the first to send out a little wave from Reno.”

He says his PR firm has issued a response and the business isn’t in any trouble.

“We’re going to continue to sell the croissant donuts in the store and the customers can call them whatever they want,” Cary said. “I have no intention of using anyone else’s name for our products. Our products have our own names on them and if I sell out every day by calling them croissant donuts then I guess we’re doing great.”

He says they normally sell out of the pastries within the first hour of opening every day.

“We’ve have customers get into arguments when we only have one left in the case,” Cary said. “Every day there’s a line to get into the store. But they’re #notcronuts.”