A burger stand that once sold single, double and triple smash burgers out of a rented food truck parked across from Calaveras Hills High School has grown into a full restaurant on N Milpitas Blvd. Dough Burgers opened its Milpitas location in August 2026, co-founder Daniel, who asked to be identified by first name only, said in an interview with The Milpitas Beat.
A Food Truck Born Near a High School Parking Lot
The business traces back to a rented food truck that Daniel remodeled himself, adding a TV and power outlets, before stationing it in the Ocean Supermarket parking lot in Milpitas, directly across from Calaveras Hills High School, according to The Milpitas Beat. He designed the original menu around single, double and triple burgers alongside fries, saucy fries and mashed fries, and the truck sold food there. He paid roughly $1,000 a month in rent for the spot, plus a few hundred dollars for insurance, on top of the roughly $1,200 to $1,300 he spent on the truck itself.
Business picked up enough that the landlord raised his rent, and the truck eventually left the Ocean Supermarket lot after the landlord removed it, the outlet reports. Six months into the operation, Daniel bought his own truck and relocated to a rented spot at 1721 Old Bay Shore Highway near downtown San Jose, where the truck sold food from 6 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. That move set up the first true Dough Burgers restaurant, which opened in San Jose in June 2025 — a listing later picked up by KQED, whose 2025 Ramadan guide noted the San José location stayed open until 1:30 a.m. on weekdays and 3 a.m. on weekends during the holiday.
Why Milpitas Felt Like Home
A little over a year after the San Jose opening, Daniel brought Dough Burgers back to Milpitas, saying the city felt comfortable because he went to school there and first launched the food truck in that same neighborhood, per the same account. An online ordering listing places the Milpitas restaurant at 1476 N Milpitas Blvd, offering pickup and delivery. The menu has settled into three burgers, three styles of fries, a dessert and fountain drinks. Dough Burgers now ranks No. 487 among 2,285 restaurants in San Jose on Tripadvisor, where one reviewer praised the “excellent halal smash burger and very good fries (not greasy).”
The restaurant's name comes from Daniel's own clothing brand, Dough Boy Clothing, which he created years before the burgers existed. Dough Burgers now has plans for two additional locations, in Hayward and Santa Cruz, the outlet notes.
From Side Hustles at 11 to Nick the Greek Management
Daniel's path to running a restaurant started long before the food truck. He started his first business at age 11, selling memberships for online game servers for $20 or $30 a month, and says he was earning a few thousand dollars monthly by age 11 or 12. He taught himself to code in C++, JavaScript and Python through YouTube, and during his freshman and sophomore years he ran a clothing reselling business.
High school brought turbulence. Daniel was expelled during his sophomore year and transferred to Calaveras Hills High School, where he went on to serve as a student board representative and sit on the budget committee, and even started an electric bike team. He graduated a year early and later obtained college credit through a college extension program across from Milpitas High School, before studying toward a business administration degree at De Anza College. He dropped out after his first semester, as Covid began intensifying.
Alongside school, Daniel worked at Starbucks for two years in high school, then began working for Nick the Greek at age 18, advancing from cashier to kitchen worker, shift supervisor, manager, district manager and operational manager before leaving at age 21. He helped open several Nick the Greek locations, and during Covid he worked seven days a week for at least 12 hours a day for seven or eight months. He attended school in Fremont for most of his life and lived on the Fremont-Milpitas border.
Lessons From the Grind
Daniel says that hands-on work experience and starting multiple businesses, rather than any classroom, taught him how to run a company. His advice to aspiring business owners, as he told The Milpitas Beat: don't let others convince you that you cannot succeed.
