Donut Madness on the Corner!

Who doesn’t love a bacon covered maple bar?

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Or an apple fritter the size of your head?

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Clearly, a lot of Winslow residents love them because the line for Hurts Donuts wrapped from the Famous Corner all the way down Kinsley and onto Third Street.

Donut Madness!

Knowing the crowds would be huge, Winslow PD even closed the road.

But really…

It’s not about the donuts …(delicious though they might be).

It’s About Community Power

A few weeks ago, the much-beloved Hurts Donuts out of Tempe put up a poll asking where to send their Emergency Donut Truck:

Winslow won.

No big deal, right? So Winslow won a Facebook poll and a visit from a fancy donut truck… what’s the big fuss??

The cool part of the story is this:

Yuma population: 95,502

Winslow Population: 9402

Even with a TENTH of the population Winslow residents bonded together and WON out over a much bigger city. How cool is that?

The Arrival

The Hurts Whaaambulance arrived lights and sirens with a police escort… because… you know. Cops love donuts, rights?

Knowing they would likely have a huge turnout, Hurts Donuts brought not only the Whaambulance, but a rented U-Haul as well, FILLED with pastry boxes of donuts.

In the trucks, 284 dozen donuts, 120 maple bacon bars, 50 apple fritters, 50 cinnamon rolls, and 70 cookie dough donuts.

A little over an hour later, every last donut was gone, with people still lined up hoping to snag a dozen.

Owner Walter Montante personally walked the line to apologize and let people know they’d sold out. They could only make and haul so many donuts. It takes time to make that many by hand.

Yes… all 3698 donuts were made by hand…

A process they started four days ago to share with the Winslow community. The Emergency Donut truck doesn’t exist simply as a marketing tool to drive business to their Tempe store, but–according to owner Walter Montante–because they like going into communities that don’t see a fun product like their donuts. They certainly brought a lot of smiles to town, that’s for sure.

So how do they calculate how many to bring? The entire event is social media-driven.

Managing partner Blake Tendick has a formula he works with based on shares and likes and comments.

It was difficult with Winslow because there was so much reaction. We ended up creating an event–something we don’t always do–so that we could get a better count. Small communities do a fantastic job getting the word out. Especially one resident in particular, Debbie…

Blake Tendick

The Debbie he’s referring to is Debbie Martinez.

She was an animal when it came to promoting this contest. If you watched her Facebook live posts, you saw her go onto the corner and ask people to vote. So why did she want the truck here so badly?

I just wanted to win I’m so darn competitive. But anytime we can do anything extra for Winslow is a plus. I love love that so many people turned out today. I hope next time they will bring more donuts or limit everyone to 2 dozen That way everyone can enjoy them. It was sad to see some families turned away. It was a fun event. Birdie, The PD and Fire dept. made it great. Without them it would have just been a donut truck!

Debbie Martinez

Having Fun as a Community

Bringing people together for a day of fun was truly what this was all about. Not simply the donuts.

Residents proved how much a little town like Winslow Arizona can do when we put our minds to it. We have a lot to be proud of, and not just because we brought a really cool donut truck to town.

Thanks Hurts Donuts!!

Many thanks to Tyler, Blake, and Walter for giving Winslow a truly fun day, AND… for donating back to the community. Alice’s Place will receive a portion of today’s proceeds!

We want to give back to the city that welcomes us.

Walter Montante, Hurts Donuts Owner

And welcome you, we did.

Until next time…

Take it Easy

By the way, I loved that in the midst of donut madness, tourists still managed to take their pictures with our statues!

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