Monterey mainstay Red’s Donuts must be doing something right. After nearly 70 years of hand-cutting donuts, business in the last five years has increased significantly. Much of that increase is due to nearly a wedding a week wanting fancy donuts, and custom orders with special sprinkles for parties.
“Donuts have gotten more popular. It’s like you’re not supposed to eat them and that is why they’re so good!” Matthew O’Donnell says with a big, full giggle.
O’Donnell co-owns the business with his sister, Kathi Saunders. Their father, Hermann “Red” O’Donnell (nicknamed for his bright red hair) opened the Alvarado Street location in 1950, then 36 years later, opened a second spot in Seaside where all of Red’s baking is now done. The team bakes every day, cranking out over 350 dozen donuts every night.
While most of those dozens are sold at Red’s, either in Seaside or Monterey, a third of those are sold around the Peninsula – everywhere from Bruno’s Deli in Carmel-by-the-Sea to Acme Coffee Roasting Co. in Seaside.
“We do everything the same way we have always done it,” O’Donnell says. “My father taught me and I taught everyone here. It just feels like home.”
O’Donnell says he knows almost everyone who walks through the door. Good customer service is key, but he says it’s valued as equally as treating employees well and being fair with their workforce. O’Donnell has had many employees stay with the bakery for decades, something that has helped keep the family tradition alive for 68 years.
The dining room walls of the Seaside location are covered in old photographs of clowns – there are bold, colorful portraits of clowns crying or laughing, and marionette clowns with blank expressions hanging over the counter. A friend of Red O’Donnell worked for Disney in the 1950s and gave him a clown painting. Customers then started bringing in their own clown kitsch, and that tradition, like the donut recipe, hasn’t changed.
During a recent interview, O’Donnell broke the news that he’s selling the bakery, but reiterated numerous times that nothing would change, because to keep it “in the family,” he is selling to Rosa and Rene Reyes, who have baked with him for over 20 years.
The transition will take place early next year, but Red’s will stay in the proverbial family, and still be making donuts the way Red did in 1950.