Dutch Girl Donuts opens the door to its second shop on National Donut Day

Dutch Girl Donuts will let Detroiters inside its second location this Friday, June 5, for a sneak peek from 8 to 10 a.m. at 2820 E. Grand Boulevard. Each visitor walks out with two free donuts while supplies last, and pre-packed dozens are on sale for $20 during the event. The date lines up with National Donut Day, observed every year on the first Friday in June.

The new shop sits in a 1928 building between Oakland Avenue and I-75, behind an Art Deco facade that was originally commissioned as the office of the Maurice Fox Ford dealership. For more than four decades it has been home to Howrani Studios, the family photography business run by Ara Howrani. The studio keeps its original space. Dutch Girl is taking the main storefront, with additional room that owner Paddy Lynch plans to use for private events.

"This is a celebration of Detroit, tradition, and the incredible support our customers have shown us over the years," Lynch said in a statement. "We couldn't imagine a better day to show off the new space than National Donut Day."

The Woodward shop has been a Detroit fixture since the Timmer family founded it in 1947. It went dark in 2021 after the deaths of its longtime owners. Lynch bought the business and the building from the Timmer family and reopened the Woodward original on May 11, 2024, with the recipes intact and several former staff back behind the counter. Donuts sold at the Grand Boulevard space will be baked at the Woodward bakery.

Lynch is a third-generation funeral director who has spent the last several years putting historic Detroit buildings back into use. He also runs The Schvitz, the longtime bathhouse on Oakland Avenue, and Dakota Inn Rathskeller, the German bar on John R just north of Six Mile. Ara Howrani was the person who first walked Lynch into The Schvitz, and that introduction is what brought him back to the East Grand Boulevard building when it came time to find space for a second donut shop.

For Friday, the offer is simple. Walk into the lobby, see the work in progress, take two free donuts, and buy a dozen for twenty dollars to take home.

National Donut Day was started in 1938 by the Salvation Army to honor the volunteers who served fried dough to American soldiers in France during the First World War. For Dutch Girl, which has spent nearly eight decades on Woodward, the day is a fair excuse to throw the doors open on a second chapter.