One of Lexington’s oldest bakeries is celebrating a golden anniversary
These days with beloved local restaurants closing (looking at you, Parkette Drive-In), it’s worth celebrating when something great is still here.
And Donut Days, a classic Lexington bakery at 185 Southland Dr., has a lot to celebrate: 50 years in business, as of Sept. 3.
“Fifty years in a row, including the pandemic years,” said current owner Fred Wohlstein. Even during the COVID shutdown, the bakery stayed open because it had a drive-thru window. “We kept our same hours, we never changed. The drive-thru was the saving grace.”
Wohlstein said the bakery plans a party Sept. 3 from noon to 2 p.m. to mark the milestone. With cake, of course, and some giveaways.
Lexington does have a lot of loyalty when it comes to doughnut shops. Besides Donut Days being one of Lexington’s oldest bakeries, there is Spalding’s Bakery, which opened in 1929, and Magee’s Bakery, which opened in 1956.
Wohlstein bought Donut Days Bakery in 2010 from founder Neill Day, who opened the business in 1972 as a Donut Kastle franchise. But Day changed the name to Donut Days and dropped the affiliation two years later.
Donut Days has always made much more than doughnuts for Lexington and Central Kentucky. The bakery has a wide array of iced cookies, cupcakes and decorated cakes, plus pastries of other kinds. Seasonal favorites include hot cross buns at Easter, King Cakes for Mardi Gras and buttery rolls for Thanksgiving. And the counter inside has been a popular place for locals to warm a chair and drink coffee.
The bakery has invited alumni from the 1970s through today to share memories of the shop on social media. The bakery has been posting memories online as well, including photos of the original business and sign.
One memory in particular stands out: In 2021, a Cynthiana police officer and an EMT got married there, a first for the bakery.
Donut Days has provided sweets and carbs in bulk and one at a time for thousands over the years, including on some of Lexington’s iciest days as long as the shop had power.
“We don’t close because of the weather,” Wohlstein said.
They can’t: People are relying on them, especially if they have a lot of mouths to feed.
“Volume is one of our strong suits. When someone wants a lot of something, we can deliver,” he said. “One time we did 500 dozen glazed doughnuts. That’s 6,000 doughnuts.”
He won’t say who placed the massive order, just that it was an appreciate event for a local business. The order was so big they couldn’t deliver all the doughnuts at once. Instead, they had to make and deliver them in installments over a 24-hour period, he said.
Donut Days also supplied baked goods for the 2015 Breeders’ Cup, he said. “Those were some seriously large numbers, and they kept upping it.”
His strategy is to take the order and then solve the problem of how to get it done.
“Need 2,000 Christmas cookies? We got you,” he said.
Donut Days Bakery
Where: 185 Southland Drive
Hours: 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday, 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday.
Call: 859-277-9414
This story was originally published August 31, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
