NORTHAMPTON — After four years of smashing success in Amherst, Glazed Doughnut Shop is set to open a second location in downtown Northampton.
Owners Keren and Nick Rhodes hope to open the second Glazed at the former home of SIP cafe at 8 Crafts Ave. in early to mid-August, where they’ll serve up their doughnuts and other treats.
“It’s natural growth, I think, in this area to be on both sides of the bridge,” Keren Rhodes said Monday. “We’ve been looking to expand for a while but the right factors had to coincide – money, location, a whole bunch of things.”
For the last six months, Rhodes said they’ve been refining their methods, buying new equipment and changing procedures with an eye toward efficiency and building a self-directed crew.
Part of that included switching filled doughnuts from a round to a bar shape, so they can be cut by a machine rather than individually by hand. That will allow Glazed to increase its production dramatically, according to Rhodes.
For example, with the switch from round cookie dough-topped doughnuts to bars, the work to shape the week’s cookie dough has been cut down from six hours to 30 minutes, Rhodes said.
And keeping up with demand is already a challenge with just one store. On the busiest Saturdays during the school year Glazed will sell about 250 dozen doughnuts. “It has to be automated,” Rhodes said.
The regular doughnuts will be made in Amherst, while the gluten-free selection will be made at the Northampton location. That will allow Glazed to decrease cross-contamination while expanding its gluten-free offerings, Rhodes said.
But growth definitely doesn’t mean a reduction in quality or freshness, Rhodes said.
“We’ll make them here and half-an-hour later they’ll be in Northampton,” she said.
The Rhodeses earlier this year raised the base wage paid at Glazed to $12 an hour in an effort to give employees a financial boost, while also expecting more of them. Their strategy worked, Rhodes said.
“We have a really, really solid crew now for the first time in four years,” she said. “Quality and attention to detail has gone way up.”
In the summer, Glazed has 10 workers in Amherst. That increases to 13 during the school year.
Two new hires are training to work at the Northampton location and Rhodes said she expects to hire about five more.
While Northampton doughnut eaters will get the same Glazed treats they’ve come to know and love, the Northampton store will include some new features.
“It’s not driven by the college students in the same way,” Rhodes said of the city.
While the line at Glazed is often out the door after last call in Amherst, Rhodes said they’re aiming to have the Northampton shop open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., because it’s not close to many of downtown Northampton’s bars. But if there’s demand, Rhodes said Glazed will cater to that late night crowd.
And with the opening of Glazed in Northampton, Rhodes said it will be the only place in the city to get Rao’s coffee.
“I’m hoping in Northampton we’ll have more of a coffee business,” she said. But “it’s not another cafe, it’s something different.”
Rhodes said she’s hopeful that people will flock to Glazed for an after-dinner treat. Because even those who are health conscious can’t seem to deny the occasional doughnut, she said.
“There’s something emotional and nostalgic about doughnuts for everybody,” she said.
Chris Lindahl can be reached at clindahl@gazettenet.com.