North Shore Hwy 61

Customers agree the donuts made by Dee Brazell and Stacy Hawkins are the World's Best.

At World’s Best Donuts in Grand Marais Grandma’s influence is clear—Grandma being the one who started this four-generation North Shore institution 41 years ago. The donut recipe is still the same old standby Grandma used, the Donut Winners Club is still going strong, and employees still wake up to make the donuts at the crack of dawn.

World’s Best Donuts also doesn’t adhere to regular business hours; they close up shop when the donuts run out. Often this happens around 4 pm, and it’s no surprise—by most accounts, they really are the World’s Best.

Opened in 1969, the business that would become World’s Best Donuts was a small operation that was originally run out of a small building where Dockside Fish Market stands today. Grandma, as she is to the current team of Stacey Hawkins and Dee Brazell who now run the shop, was Merieta Altrichter. Back in 1969 Merieta wanted something to supplement her $2 an hour minimum wage job at Joyne’s, and started waking up early to mix donut batter by hand.

Neither Stacey nor Dee really knew how it got started, or why Merieta decided to make donuts.

“We often wonder that—we don’t know how she knew what to do,” Stacey said. “She didn’t really measure things, she would just pinch the dough and keep adjusting ingredients until it felt right.”

Whatever the reason, Merieta soon moved to the Bargain Barn building (which stood on the site of what is now the parking lot next to The Attic in downtown Grand Marais). There she built the business up to the point where she was able to quit her day job. How many donuts did she make each day?

“Grandma always said she made more donuts than McDonald’s because they had time to count,” Dee said. “It’s the same today.”

Later Merieta established the small red World’s Best Donut building in downtown Grand Marais. Skizzles were added to the menu, and since that end of town was fairly quiet at the time, Merieta started the Donut Winners Club to encourage repeat customers. Customers sign their name on a list and if they remember their number when they return the next summer their prize is a free donut. The Club is still going strong now, with 536 people participating last year.

The collection of coffee mugs on shelves at the shop has also grown. What started as a service to friends (so they didn’t have to tote their mugs back and forth) has grown to a collection of over 200 mugs reserved for donut and coffee lovers.

Aside from the mugs, World’s Best Donuts features another bit of unique décor—pictures of people holding World’s Best Donuts coffee mugs from all over the world. Notable pictures include ones of a mug accompanying a scuba diver in the ocean, one at the end of a rainbow and a mug that flew on the Concorde supersonic jet. Dee and Stacey said they receive so many photos that they are constantly running out of room to display them.

Stacey and Dee, who started their tenure at World’s Best Donuts sugaring donuts when they were just kids, took over running the business in 2002. At first they were wary of taking on the enormous task, but now they say they’re having fun with it.

And Grandma Merieta still has a presence there. Into her 70s she still spent time at the shop.

This year the shop gained 400 square feet in the form of a new, more efficient kitchen. Are there any other changes coming up? Maybe, but only if Grandma would approve.

“We try to keep it the way Grandma would always want,” Stacey said. “We always know she is smiling at us.”