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