It happened pretty much the way Jason Bockman figured it would, except a whole lot faster. The new owner of World’s Fair Donuts opened the shop early today (just before 6 a.m.) to accommodate the crowd gathering outside.
“I figured we’d sell out,” he said, “but wow.”
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Bockman says it was mayhem until the final doughnut—approximately 2,000 of them—was sold three hours later. (The capacity of the off-site commissary is several times that figure.)
“Emotions were running high,” Bockman said of the quick sell-out. “People were saying, ‘Oh my God, no!’ Some of them were crying.
“After we ran out,” he adds, “I kept the doors open and ordered some pizzas from my friend Mitch [Frost] up at Pie Guy. Anyone who came in got some. I chatted ’em up until we ran out of that.”
Bockman recently bought the shop from longtime owners Peggy and Terry Clanton after Peggy was injured in a fall, forcing the shop to close in mid-July. After a brief cosmetic makeover, Bockman (who’s also the co-founder of Strange Donuts), reopened the doors Wednesday.
“At Strange, most customers buy a doughnut or two and maybe some coffee,” he said. “Today, it was ‘I’ll have a dozen, or three dozen, or five dozen…‘ We’ll be ready for that tomorrow.”
There were rumblings around town whether Bockman would “Strange up the place,” as some put it, and fancy up what for decades had been a simple formula for success: selling 16 traditional varieties of doughnuts made daily for less than $1 each, cash only, tax included. Leading up to the reopening, Bockman emphasized that the iconic donut shop “absolutely will not change.” Last month, he told SLM that with expectations so high and memories so ingrained, he just wanted to continue it as it was. It would be sacrilegious to change the place, he said.
And so it was on day one. “The tradition has been honored,” Bockman said. The only noticeable physical difference was a large mural of Peggy Clanton, Bockman’s friend and mentor, high on the back wall, painted by local painter and muralist Daniel Burnett.
“She’s an icon in St. Louis,” Bockman said. “There’s Lewis and Clark, and then there’s Peggy.”
