Since 2019, Blondie’s Donuts owner Michelle Diggs has been cranking out homemade doughnuts in creative flavors like maple-bacon and “‘Nana Pudding.” But after six years of business, Diggs said that her most popular flavor has been enduring: a vanilla doughnut with rainbow sprinkles.
“People love sprinkles, from 8-year-old kids to 40-year-old men,” she said. “Those are always a top seller.”
Friday is National Donut Day — and chains like Sheetz and Dunkin’, are offering sweet specials and giveaways. But many Baltimore-based doughnuteries, like fan favorites B. Doughnut, New System Bakery and Cloudy Donut Co., have either relocated or closed their doors for good.
The remaining number of Baltimore doughnut shops might be small, but they’re mighty — and they have plenty of thoughts on why they’ve endured.
Mitchell Salland, the owner of Migue’s Mini Donuts, agrees with Diggs that simple doughnuts have always been his most successful.
“The basics are what they like,” Salland said about Baltimore’s doughnut-eating population. “We probably have 30 different toppings, but the best ones are just a simple glaze or powdered sugar.”
That hasn’t stopped Salland, and many other doughnut proprietors, from trying to innovate. At one point, Salland said he considered carrying mochi doughnuts, made with rice flour, to cater to gluten-free customers — but when he bought a bag from an Elliott City shop, many of his customers were less than impressed.
“I thought it was absolutely fabulous, but some people found it offensive,” he said about the taste tests he conducted at his Baltimore Farmer’s Market stand.
“They like simple, and I’ll give them simple,” Salland said, adding that he might try selling the mochi doughnuts at the 32nd Street Farmers Market in Waverly, where he said things tend to “get a little fancier.”
Different communities within Baltimore have different doughnut preferences, and Salland does his best to meet demand. At Waverly’s market, he has to keep his vegan doughnuts stocked, whereas in Fells Point, he has needed to have extra caramel sauce on hand.
In Brooklyn, unconventional flavors work best for Michael Roslan, co-owner of Diablo Doughnuts. The shop boasts eye-widening daily flavors, like the “Unicorn Farts” coated in Fruity Pebbles and the “Captain Chesapeake” with caramel and Old Bay, as well as rotating options like mango-pineapple with Tajín and with-the-works cheeseburgers on glazed-doughnut buns. Roslan said the offerings are not just creative whims — they’re a response to his customers’ interest in more wacky doughnuts.
“I never thought I’d be doing stuff like this,” he said. “We started with maybe 12 flavors, and, now, we’re at over 30 flavors per day.”
Roslan is familiar with being open to change. Over the shop’s 12 years of operation, he’s moved operations across the Baltimore area, including to Fells Point, South Baltimore and Diablo’s current location in Nottingham.
Salland suspects that the insecurity of Baltimore doughnut shops is, in part, due to steep ingredient prices.
“It’s really hard to survive,” Salland said. “There’s really only so much somebody’s willing to pay for a doughnut .”
To make it as a doughnut shop in Baltimore, Diggs said that it’s critical to stay flexible. For Blondie’s, that means a plan to open 24-hour doughnut kiosks across the city. It also means adjusting accordingly to shifts in trends. For example, Diggs suspects that Blondie’s monthly vegan weekends will not last forever.
“I’m not going to say the vegan trend is dying, but it’s not as popular as it was three years ago,” said Diggs. “The American diet is going to be as consistent and as predictable as can be. You’ll have your trends that come, but they won’t last.”
In recent years, the solution for some Baltimore-born doughnut shops has been to travel to new markets. Former Beverly Hills fan favorite Cloudy Donut Co. now has two all-vegan doughnut shops in New York City, featuring a lineup of flavors like brown-butter chocolate chip, cherry pie and grapefruit mimosa (complete with a pipette of prosecco). While customers in New York have been receptive, owner Derrick Faulcon said that the new clientele has been different from his previous Baltimore base.
“No one’s walking into your shop in Baltimore thinking, ‘I can leverage a photo for a free dozen doughnuts,'” Faulcon said, describing occasional customer interactions he’s had in his Manhattan location. However, in his shop in Brooklyn, New York, Faulcon said that he is reminded of the Baltimore community.
“They’re real — it’s a mom who comes every week and we know her kids, and then we have our office orders or catering for a birthday,” he said. “It’s much more intimate.”
As such, Faulcon knows that he can’t stay away from Baltimore for too long. That’s why he still holds the occasional doughnut pop-up in Baltimore-area neighborhoods. His next visit is Sunday, and he’s looking forward to picking up where he left off with his local fans.
“It’s not that we don’t love Baltimore,” Diggs said. “We just felt like what we had was global.”
Have a news tip? Contact Jane Godiner at jgodiner@baltsun.com or on Instagram as @JaneCraves.
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