Caroline Aghajanian: Tucked away in the city of
Glendora, California,
is a small doughnut shop that's always busy.
Locals come in for their daily coffee and doughnut,
but there's one thing that brings people
from near and far to The Donut Man.
The famous strawberry doughnuts.
Aah! Yum. This is delicious.
Customer: We really love it. It's really good.
It's really delicious.
Customer: Gotta be the best.
Customer: I got it everywhere, but it's really good.
Customer: This is my first time having this doughnut.
The fresh strawberries are really, really good.
It's definitely worth getting messy for.
Caroline: Jim Nakano opened The Donut Man
in the spring of 1972,
but it wasn't until two years later
that one fruit changed his business.
Jim Nakano: Well, the reason we got into it
is my wife says, "Let's go for the American dream."
In about 1974, a friend of ours
who grew strawberries,
'cause this area was all strawberries,
on the other side of the hill.
That was all strawberries.
But in '74, he came to me and says,
"Jim, you gotta come up with a strawberry doughnut."
He said, "I got so much."
He said, "I'll supply you whatever you want."
So we said OK.
And I had another friend that said,
"I'll help you make the glaze and everything,"
'cause he had a bakery and all that.
Soon as we tried it,
we realized that we had a good product.
You could use it for the morning breakfast.
It's a good snack.
Lunch.
Or dinner, dessert.
Caroline: The shop makes hot doughnuts 24/7.
They use potato flour and live yeast
when prepping batches of dough.
How long the dough proofs and fries for
depends on the temperature and humidity
inside the shop each day.
The team mixes fresh strawberries
with homemade strawberry jelly filling
before stuffing a generous amount into the doughnut.
The strawberry doughnuts are only served
from February to September,
so we had to see what all the hype was about.
♪ We're gonna get some doughnuts ♪
They have the classic chocolate swirls.
They have their peach doughnuts.
But I'm here for this bad boy,
the strawberry doughnuts.
So, a lot of people drive here from all over California
to try these doughnuts.
There's been a line out the door since we came,
so let's dig in.
I'm just gonna go for this one.
We're all gonna make a mess, whatever.
Ooh, yes, it is glazy.
It's, this is gonna be a mess.
Look at that.
It's like a burger full of strawberries.
Aw!
But it is good.
The doughnut's nice and crispy on the outside,
which is pretty good.
I love how it has kind of this, like,
good texture on the bottom, if that makes sense.
But it's not too sweet.
It's not, like, a overwhelmingly sweet doughnut.
My biggest piece of advice is use a fork.
Don't do what I did.
Not only is The Donut Man famous among locals,
but we met people from all over the state
who came down to try it for themselves.
Customer: Well, it was bookmarked on my Yelp
for three years.
So I was like, "One day I'm gonna go."
Came to Torrance,
and then from Torrance we came to Glendora.
And we're like, "We're in Glendora."
Definitely gonna get the fresh peach
and the fresh strawberries,
and then I'll see what else is on the menu.
Customer: I've been coming here for years, yeah.
Customer: Yeah, and we're on a road trip to San Diego.
Customer: Yeah, the road-trip food.
Customer: And we were like,
"Hmm, we're craving doughnuts."
Producer: When's the first time you had one?
Customer: Hmm, honest?
When I moved here, probably 22 years ago.
Mm. [laughs]
If you eat it with a fork,
you don't blend all the flavors.
Customer: That's true, never thought of it.
Customer: This is a true blend of all the flavor.
Customer: I remember coming here in high school.
After, like, the pep rallies and stuff,
people would come and hang out
in that parking lot back there.
And so it's definitely, like, the go-to area
in Glendora, I would say.
Jim: We're very lucky, 'cause when I started this store,
I told my wife we wouldn't be that big of a store
because we're such a small community and all of that.
I would say 60% to 70% of our customers
come from more than seven miles away,
and that's unusual.
And then I get big-headed when you go somewhere,
maybe, and then somebody says, "Oh, I know you.
You run The Donut Man."
Those are my favorite things.
Caroline: I'm not gonna count this as a doughnut.
I'm gonna count this as, like, a healthy breakfast
with a little bit of dessert,
because that's what it is.
You get more strawberries than you do doughnut,
which is amazing.
It's like you're eating healthy.