Glazed Donuts, an upscale donut shop in downtown Key West, Fla., is petitioning to serve alcohol as the owners mull plans to stay open 24 hours.
Owners and husband-and-wife team Jonathan and Megan Pidgeon have wanted to add mimosas and bellinis to their limited menu of donuts and coffee beverages since opening less than a year ago.
Photo by Kristen Onderdunk
“It’s a five- by two-mile island in middle of the ocean. There’s not a lot to do so people either go fishing or drinking,” Jonathan jokes. “A lot of the tourism here centers on the water and tropical-type drinks, so we do some tropical donuts flavors. It would be nice to offer mimosas with our donuts.”
The 800-sq.-ft. donut shop turns out roughly 30 dozen yeast and cake donuts a day for a mix of retail and wholesale clients, which is no small feat since they’re all mixed, shaped and cut by hand.
The Pidgeons have no intentions of turning Glazed into a bar or night club, but because it is located within 300 ft. of a church, it must be granted a special exception from the city’s planning board before they can apply to the state for a liquor license. The planning board–a volunteer group appointed by city commissioners–only meets once per month, and the Pidgeons are not slated to appear until the third Thursday in March. “We began the process back in October,” Jonathan notes.
But they don’t anticipate any additional roadblocks once they get approval from the committee, especially since the church and the other local businesses nearby have already given their blessing to the owners’ decision to sell alcohol. “Once we have the license in hand, we’ll start serving the next day,” Megan adds.
Photo by Kristen Onderdunk
The pair studied at the Culinary Institute of America and Megan worked as a pastry chef before they opened Glazed, so it’s no surprise that the donuts go beyond the simple glazed variety, though glazed donuts are a best seller. Fresh pineapple is poached in rum and lime simple syrup and puréed for drizzling atop the popular piña colada donut. Scratch-made key lime curd is piped into a key lime pie donut that’s topped with meringue and graham streusel. And seasonal jelly donuts are made using juices such as fresh blood orange and reduced pinot noir grape juice. The beverages will reflect the owners’ penchant for fresh ingredients and elevated technique, with cocktails such as peach nectar bellinis and fresh cherry champagne cocktails.
And because many of the donuts contain alcohol as a flavor enhancer, it also would make sense to get a liquor license from a sheer cost perspective. “It would make ordering easier and cheaper for us,” Jonathan says. “It would be nice to just buy wholesale and be done with it instead of going to a liquor store.”
The shop is currently open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., but the Pidgeons hope to expand to 24 hours simply because they’re almost constantly at the shop making donuts for a growing number of retail and wholesale customers.
“We need two hours of mixing and fermentation time, then another hour for frying and glazing so that gets us to 3 a.m.; then another half hour for shaping and rolling out. And we also need to be able to do donuts for the shop, so now we’re getting to work at 12 a.m.,” Jonathan says. “We might as well just be open.”