Every Day I Yearn for a Cub Foods Donut Hole

Every morning I wake up and yearn for a donut hole. And not just any donut hole. What I crave is a cake donut hole from the Cub Foods bakery, sold in a plastic clamshell package with 19 of its ilk for $4.99. 

Cub is the regional supermarket of my Minnesota childhood, and I've been eating these donut holes for as long as I can remember. Ever since I was a kid riding captive in my mom’s shopping cart, the packages have been stacked unceremoniously in the bakery department, designed to be almost thoughtlessly tossed into your cart on your way to the checkout.

My Lifelong Love Affair With Cub Foods Donut Holes

There’s nothing particularly notable about Cub Foods donut holes, but they nonetheless became a hallmark of my life in the Midwest: On every first day of school from kindergarten to 12th grade, my mom would buy a box of the rainbow sprinkle variety that came in a special edition Back-to-School carton shaped like a school bus. When I was living in Minneapolis after college, I once got in a fight with my roommate and returned home later to find an apology note and a package of powdered sugar donut holes awaiting me on the kitchen counter. A gift of donut holes, to me, is a simple gesture, but it can be a grand one, too: I knew I was in love with a boyfriend when I arrived at his apartment one night as he was putting away groceries and found that he’d included a box of cinnamon sugar donut holes for me in his Cub haul.

I moved to Brooklyn two years ago, and among the many things I miss about my home state—the algal breeze wafting off the lakes in summer, the punishing reassurance of subzero winter temps, driving down I-94 with the windows down to see a movie at the Southdale Center cineplex—are these specific donut holes. A Cub Foods donut hole is almost fast food-adjacent in both quality and convenience, but with a tinge of local spirit. This is why I can’t find what I’m looking for in New York: I don’t want to crave a donut hole and go to the donut shop to get one. I want to already be at the grocery store for scallions and oat milk when I suddenly remember that they sell my favorite snack here too, and it was baked today.

The Hometown Bakery Magic No Chain Can Match

Because that’s the other thing: The magic of a Cub Foods donut hole is that it’s made in-house, unlike the many subpar cartons of Dunkin’ Munchkins and Entenmann’s Little Bites lining the aisles of my Bushwick supermarket. Behind the Cub bakery counter lies an industrial kitchen of the size only a large suburban grocery store has the square footage to support. And almost every morning, this is where the donut holes get made.

“We sell a ton of them,” says Kyle Watanabe. He’s the Bakery Manager at my hometown Cub in Minnetonka, MN. In his 30 years working in the Cub Foods bakery department, he’s developed a sixth sense for donut hole supply and demand. Powdered sugar, he tells me, is far and away their most popular flavor—they always sell out. “We never make enough powdered sugar ones,” he says.

“I think people like just a quick snack,” Watanabe says of their popularity. “The cartons are a good size. You know, grab three or four donut holes and you're good to go. Close it up and come back later.” Plus, he adds, “It’s nice, convenient, one-stop shopping.”

The donut holes’ day starts at 3 AM, when bakers mix the dough and load it into what Watanabe calls “the hopper.” It spits out four donut holes at a time into a bath of hot oil, where they fry before getting glazed, or sugared, or coated in sprinkles. The bakery makes between 800 and 900 donut holes on mornings like these before loading them into cartons and bringing them out to the display table, where they sell like, I suppose, hotcakes.

As a little kid, I’d been so curious about what went on behind the Cub Foods bakery counter, and when I tell Watanabe this, he gets suddenly wistful. “The industry’s changed a lot since then,” he says. When he first started working in the bakery in the early 90s, Watanabe says everything was made from scratch. “We had bakers around the clock. I mean, I would start frying donuts at midnight.” Back then, the kitchen was livelier. The hours were longer. The staff was bigger. There was always something getting mixed, something proofing, something coming out of the oven, something getting packaged. 

But over time, the bakery’s become increasingly streamlined. More premixed batters. Less labor. A quieter kitchen. Fewer staff. “We’re a dying breed,” he says.

What hasn’t changed, though, is his customers’ loyalty to the Cub Foods bakery, even those of us who have moved out of state. Watanabe tells me about a couple of regulars who moved to the West Coast, but make an annual Cub pilgrimage for the bakery’s special “chunky bread” when they’re back in town visiting family for the holidays. “They'll come in and get 20 to 30 loaves and bring them back to California. They give them to all their friends and stuff like that,” he says. “It’s so funny. They, like, box it up and mail it home.”

I’m thrilled to learn that I’m not the only far-flung Minnesota girl with a loyalty to a specific Cub bakery item. But of course I couldn’t be. The Cub bakery is a dependable haven, a vanilla-scented hug waiting at the end of the freezer section’s harsh chill. And the donut holes are the little treat you can convince yourself you deserve on any day. They don’t even feel like a guilty pleasure—how could they? They were made right here, just for you.