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  • 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.

  • We really love it. It's really good.

  • It's really delicious.

  • Gotta be the best.

  • I got it everywhere, but it's really good.

  • This is my first time having this doughnut.

  • The fresh strawberries are really, really good.

  • It's definitely worth getting messy for.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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, "Where is Glendora?"

  • Definitely gonna get the fresh peach and the fresh strawberries, and then I'll see what else is on the menu.

  • I've been coming here for years, yeah.

  • Yeah, and we're on a road trip to San Diego.

  • Yeah, a little road-trip to...

  • And we were like, "Hmm, we're craving doughnuts."

  • When's the first time you had one?

  • Hmm, honest?

  • When I moved here, probably 22 years ago.

  • Mm.

  • If you eat it with a fork, you don't blend all the flavors.

  • That's true, never thought of it.

  • This is a true blend of all the flavor.

  • 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.

  • 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 bigheaded when you go somewhere, maybe, and then somebody says, "Oh, I know you. You run The Donut Man."

  • Those are my favorite things.

  • 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.

Tucked away in the city of Glendora, California, is a small doughnut shop that's always busy.

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