Hurts Donut

Maybe you had that kid in your class back in elementary school; you know, the guy would come up to you at recess or between classes and gently ask, "Would you like a hurts donut?"

Just seconds after you said yes.  He punched you in the shoulder.  Hard.

Then the kid would ask, "Hurts, do nut."

He was right.  It hurt.  No doubt about it.

It was the first thought in my head when I saw the letters outside an empty restaurant on Parmenter Street in Middleton.

A month before it opened, the Facebook posts started with photos of unusual donuts teasing facebookers with a selection of 70 donuts and their hours.

Hurts Donut likes to say it's open 8 days a week, 25 hours a day.  How do they do that?  Is there some kind of time machine behind the oven?

The social media campaign worked.  TV stations covered it's opening and there was a line out the door and down the sidewalk.

Each time I drove past there was a line out the door.  Even on Sunday morning!

Ten days after it opened, we showed up.  There wasn't a line... outside.  The photo at left is what we found inside.

The serpentine line stretched to the far wall and all the way back before reaching the cases of donuts.

Maybe 40 minutes into our wait we reached the windows where the donut artists were working.

One of their specialties is the Cereal Killer.  A frosted donut with cereal on top.  The killer part might be the calories, the sugar, or the artery clogging grease; however, sometimes that's the price of happiness.

The joint was jumping.  75 - 100 folks on a Friday night waiting to get a donut.  Some patiently, some... not so much.

It was more than an hour by the time we got to order.  Really.

For some reason there was only one person taking orders and filling boxes with donuts.  I'm not sure that's the only reason there was a line, but it didn't help.

When we walked in, there were only four or five types of donuts. The inventory built up as we crawled to the front of the line.

An interesting bit on their menu to me was different prices for a dozen donuts.  Take the box they pick for you and it's $3 less than the box you select.

When we got to the counter we ordered a Hurts Dozen and a Hurts Little (half dozen) and let the guy behind the counter figure it out.

Hurts Dozen

I asked for no repeats, so we got one of each donut in the case, plus a Cotton Candy donut picked off a rack next to the display case.

I'll try to describe the ones I sampled or recognized. The pinkish one in the front row on the right is that Cotton Candy variety.

There is an Animal Cracker donut with sprinkles and an Animal Cracker.  The donut topped with cracked up Oreo cookies was pretty awesome.

Hurts Little

There are a couple Cereal Killers in addition to the Capn' Crunch, Froot Loops in the front and a Cocoa Crisp in the Hurts Little box.  Some Lucky Charms topped another - makes me think a kid could get his annual supply of sugar in one box.

One donut was topped with something which tasted like Skittles, but my favorite was the one with two pretzels on a a chocolate donut with two flavors of frosting.

It's fun and different, and I'm pretty sure after a couple more weeks it won't require an 75 minute wait to get a box.  Hurts Donut?   Yes, please.