A hole-some deal

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This article was published 24/07/2023 (1113 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In late June, the owners of Donut House on Selkirk Avenue passed on a dough-stained, near-century-old recipe book to their neighbours down the street.

North Enders have been enjoying the baked treats for 76 years, 49 of them at the hands of the Meier family, who kept the doors open, the ovens warm and customers happy.

“Some of our products are 75 years old, for sure. Some of them are older,” says now-former owner Russ Meier.

About a year ago, Meier began having casual conversations with Jon Hochman, who had acquired Gunn’s Bakery, another Selkirk Avenue institution, in 2019.

“Since I had taken over the business, we had become quite good friends,” Hochman says. “Not only are we bakery owners, but we’re bakery owners on Selkirk Avenue, which brings its own challenges.”

When Meier’s father died in July 2020 at the age of 85, his absence left a hole in the heart of the business. On top of that, COVID-19 was threatening the bakery’s survival.

At the age of 60, Meier saw retirement on the horizon. Soon, his conversations with Hochman moved from small talk to business concerns.

“We got to know each other a little bit, and then one day I kind of joked and said, ‘I know you guys are super-busy down there, why don’t you look to expand?’” Meier says.

Hochman was immediately onboard.

“Initially, it started off as some jokes, and eventually, it became a serious conversation,” Hochman says. “He was wanting to retire, and we were looking to grow, and I thought that it was just a very good fit for our business.”

On June 28, the Donut House was formally handed off to Hochman and the Gunn’s Bakery team. For the past three weeks, Meier has been at the shop helping them transition into the doughnut biz.

Having purchased Gunn’s, an 86-year-old kosher bakery, a few years back, Hochman knows a thing or two about running an old-fashioned shop.

“I’ll have the same approach with the Donut House as I did with Gunn’s,” he says. “The purpose of buying an existing institution is to maintain and to continue with the products that make the business what they are.”

But after nearly eight decades in the North End, Hochman has some big shoes — and ovens — to fill at the Donut House.

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The Donut House story begins with a delivery driver, a local baker and a network of North End grocery stores 76 years ago.

Alvin Slotin, then a delivery driver for a printing company, was approached by a bakery owner who wanted him to distribute his doughnuts to local grocers. After repeated requests, he agreed.

In the beginning, Slotin’s doughnut route took him to his sister’s William Avenue grocery store and later expanded to multiple other stores in the North End.

At one grocery store on Magnus Avenue, Slotin met owner Sam Gilman, who soon took on a doughnut route of his own. By then, the demand for doughnuts was so high that Slotin started baking extras in his home kitchen on Bannerman Avenue.

A few years later, when operations began to expand, Slotin and Gilman became official business partners and they purchased a baking warehouse at 500 Selkirk Ave., between Andrews and Powers streets.

The Donut House officially had a home.

When the shop opened its doors in 1952, the Selkirk Avenue strip was the heart and soul of the North End.

“It was a melting pot,” Meier says. “It was where most of the immigrants lived, and they settled and they shopped. There were shoe stores, butchers, bakeries and furniture stores, and everything seemed to be on Selkirk Avenue.”

By the ‘60s, Donut House expanded to several satellite locations across the city. Then, in the mid-’70s, Meier-senior entered the picture.

Russ’s father Erhard Meier immigrated from Germany to Canada in 1954. When he arrived in the Prairies, he planted new roots in the neighbourhood.

In 1974, after working as a bakery manager for the Dominion supermarket chain, Meier stopped by the Donut House and introduced himself. After being invited to work there for a month, things just felt right.

Soon, he partnered with his friend from church, Joe Knoll, and purchased the Donut House. Fast-forward to 1987, Erhard brought Russ in to take on Knoll’s role of general manager.

When businesses began migrating from the North End in the late 1980s, the Meiers thought about relocating. Ultimately, they decided to stick it out in the neighbourhood where loyal customers stop in regularly to satisfy their need for a sugary fix.

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Decades later, COVID hit. When the pandemic tanked their sales, many longtime Donut House staff were working only a few shifts a week. Meier was forced to rethink his entire business model in a pinch.

Ahead of the 2020 holiday season, Meier found himself flipping through the pages of his familial recipe bible. While skimming instructions for Christmas classics, from gingerbread to shortbread, he had an idea: what if the Donut House introduced a holiday baking line?

Using word of mouth and social media, he decided to give it a try.

“The thing absolutely blew up,” he says. “I think the first year we made, I don’t know, 30,000 cookies?”

“By year 3, I think we hit 60,000 cookies.”

Ultimately, Meier’s holiday bonanza propelled the Donut House through the throes of the pandemic. Once the business got back on its feet, Meier reached out to big-box grocery chains. Soon, they began delivering fresh doughnuts to local Sobeys and No Frills locations across the city.

Still itching for retirement, Meier wanted to sell Donut House on the way up. Now transferring his family business to Hochman, Meier feels he’s ending his legacy at the perfect time.

“They get all the recipes, all of my knowledge, everything that’s found in that bible,” he says.

“I think it’ll be fantastic for their clients and for our clients as well, because they have different offerings that they can bring to our customers and vice-versa. We’ve got a foothold in stores where they don’t, and they’re in places where we’re not. If they can put the two together, it’ll be great for them.”

While change is about, most things at the Donut House will stay the same. The store’s dedicated team of employees — many of whom have been working there for 15 to 25 years — aren’t going anywhere. The classics, such as the apple crumble bread, will continue to fill the ovens in the wee hours of the morning.

While he’ll miss the line of jovial regulars, the sugary aromas and his hard-working staff, Meier is excited for the next, slower-paced chapter of his life.

“In a small business, you kind of live it every day. It becomes part of you,” he says. “It’s going to be nice to turn things off a little bit.”

He’s proud to have carried 36 years of a 76-year bake shop legacy. And he’s proud to have done it in the North End.

He’s ending things on a sweet note.

cierra.bettens@freepress.mb.ca