The Donut Man

Jim Nakano founded The Donut Man in 1972 after working in the donut industry for several years through Winchell's Donut House and other Southern California donut operations. Nakano's vision was a more carefully-crafted donut operation than the typical chain-store donut shop — premium ingredients, hand-finished decoration, seasonal fresh-fruit incorporation, and the kind of attention to detail that distinguished serious artisan donut work from commodity production. The small Foothill Boulevard shop became Nakano's full-time operation and his family's business across the subsequent decades.

The strawberry donut concept emerged within the first few years of operation as Nakano experimented with seasonal fruit incorporation into traditional donut formats. The technique — splitting a glazed yeast donut horizontally and filling it with whole fresh strawberries rather than a typical jelly or cream filling — produced a distinctive product that was substantially different from what other donut shops were producing. The seasonal limitation (real fresh California strawberries only) reinforced the special-occasion character of the donut and contributed to its eventual cult following.

Nakano operated the shop himself for decades, eventually transitioning ownership and operation to family members and longtime employees as he aged. The shop has maintained the same essential menu, technique, and operational approach across multiple decades of ownership transition. The 2010s national-media fame brought substantial new attention to the shop but did not fundamentally change the operation — the same donut techniques, the same seasonal fruit sourcing, and the same hand-crafted approach that defined the shop in its first decades.

The fresh strawberry donut is The Donut Man's signature item and the reason most pilgrimage visitors specifically schedule trips during strawberry season. The construction is straightforward in concept but substantial in execution — a fresh-made glazed yeast donut is split horizontally with a serrated knife, the lower half is filled with roughly a cup of whole California strawberries that have been hulled and lightly glazed with strawberry syrup, and the upper half is replaced on top. The result is a donut substantially larger and heavier than a typical glazed donut, with the texture and flavor of fresh strawberries dominating the bite alongside the yeast-donut foundation.

The tiger tail is the shop's other widely-celebrated specialty — a twisted yeast donut combining chocolate and plain dough in alternating stripes through the twist, glazed with a light sugar coating. Many donut writers and food critics argue that the tiger tail is technically the more impressive product than the strawberry donut — the lamination and twist technique requires more skill than the fruit-filled donut, and the chocolate-plain flavor balance is more sophisticated than the straightforward strawberry-and-glaze of the seasonal item. Tiger tails are available year-round and are typically the recommended pick for visitors arriving outside strawberry season.

Fresh peach donuts using the same fill-with-fresh-fruit technique as the strawberry donut appear during late summer peach season — typically July through September depending on the specific year's California peach crop. Other seasonal and specialty items rotate through the menu including pumpkin spice donuts in fall, various holiday-themed decorated donuts, and occasional experimental items. The core year-round menu includes glazed, chocolate, maple bars, apple fritters, old-fashioned, blueberry, jelly-filled, cake donuts, and various other classic donut varieties at conventional pricing alongside the premium seasonal specialties.

Strawberry season visits during peak weekend hours encounter substantial lines — sometimes 30-60 minutes wait extending out the shop door and into the parking lot. The shop has not expanded the production capacity or seating area significantly even as demand has grown enormously through the social-media era, meaning that weekend strawberry season visits genuinely involve substantial waiting. Weekday morning visits during strawberry season encounter much shorter lines while still accessing the full strawberry-donut experience.

Off-season visits (August through February) avoid the strawberry crowds entirely while still providing access to the tiger tail, the full classic donut menu, and the 24-hour operational rhythm that makes The Donut Man genuinely useful as a late-night or early-morning stop. The shop is particularly atmospheric during early-morning hours — 4am-6am batches are the freshest of the day, the parking lot is quiet, and the experience of buying donuts from a single Foothill Boulevard shop in the predawn darkness has a Route 66 roadside quality that is hard to find elsewhere in modern Southern California.

The shop's location directly on the original Route 66 alignment makes it natural to combine with other Glendora Route 66 stops — Glendora Village's walking district is minutes away, the foothill drive through Claremont and La Verne offers additional Route 66 atmosphere, and the broader San Gabriel Valley Route 66 corridor connects The Donut Man to Pasadena to the west and the Cajon Pass climb toward Victorville and Barstow to the east. Donut pilgrims often combine The Donut Man with these other Route 66 destinations into a full San Gabriel Valley Route 66 day.