Eats

Duck Donuts: The Best Donut Franchise You Need to Try

The perfect doughnut is hot, soft, and slightly crunchy on the outside with a divine melt in your mouth texture. It shouldn’t be too expensive, and it needs to be fresh out of the fryer. So fresh that you might even burn the roof of your mouth because you simply can’t wait for that first bite.

Where can you find such a creation?:

Duck Donuts.

Duck Donuts fries up made to order doughnuts that will totally knock your socks off without breaking the bank. You can score the classics like glazed and sprinkled. Or get funky with concoctions like maple bacon or French toast. The best part? A half dozen will only set you back $9! $1.50 per doughnut earns the Frugal Foodies stamp of approval.

The History of Duck Donuts

Duck Donuts birthplace is Duck, North Carolina. The brains behind the brand, Russ DiGillio, noticed that the beach town was missing a “sweet staple of happiness- a warm, fresh donut.” He whipped up some recipes and opened up the first Duck Donuts locale in 2017. People went gaga over the doughnuts, and Duck Donut became a franchise in 2013. Now, there are 215 locations in 24 states, including one in Charlottesville, Virginia. So of course I had to pop in a try a few….

With so many flavors on the menu, choosing 6 seemed impossible! My dad and I were up for the task, and this is what we tried.

The cinnamon sugar was the perfect doughnut. Soft, almost gooey on the inside, slightly crispy on the outside with the perfect amount of cinnamon sugar coating. The plain was the same, minus the coating.

Tis the season for pumpkin, and the pumpkin streusel (pictured above) did not disappoint. It had a delightfully subtle pumpkin flavor with a sweat streusel topping. French toast (pictured below) was another seasonal special, and I can’t say it particularly tasted like French toast. Then again, French toast mostly tastes like bread and syrup.

The letdown of the half dozen was the blueberry pancake (that blurry purple mount in the bottom right hand corner of the picture above.) The blueberry icing tasted artificially sweet, and the Askegaard consensus was that it was our least favorite of the bunch.

My personal favorite was the Bacon in the Sun; a hot donut with maple icing, a salted caramel drizzle, and loads of bacon bits. Sweet and salty gets my blood rushing and taste buds salivating, and this doughnut did not disappoint!

Final Thoughts on Duck Donuts:

Krispy Kreme has fresh doughnuts when you see the “hot light” on, but the flavors are limited. Dunkin’ Donuts has exciting flavors, but they aren’t fresh. Specialty doughnut shops often have unique flavors and fresh doughnuts, but they aren’t cheap.