By ROBERT E. SMITH

C-S-E News Staff

FORT PLAIN — The drought is over; Fort Plain again has a bakery it can call its own. Tuesday, December 13, was opening day for Daylight Donuts located in the former Adirondack Savings Bank space of the Save-A-Lot plaza. The bakery will operate 12 hours a day from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week.

Building and bakery owner Dennis Todd has spent over a year bringing the franchise to the village. “I was looking for a doughnut tenant but nothing came back. I studied the demographics of the area and thought perhaps this was something I could do myself. Of all the franchises available, Daylight Donuts was the best; I sampled the product in their Utica shop at different times of the day and with different people. They always had great flavor, consistent quality and the licensing terms were favorable for a small business,” said Todd.

Daylight Donuts is no fly-by-night operation. In business since 1954, Daylight Donuts is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and now has 901 independently-owned retail outlets throughout the world. The Fort Plain shop is only the fifth Daylight Donuts in New York State.

For the past week, Pete Ieoriatti, a Daylight Donut regional sales manager from Aukeny, Iowa, has been training Todd and a bakers dozen of staff in the art of doughnut making. “My Dad made doughnuts after the war (WWII) from 1950 to 1970. I’ve been with Daylight Donuts since 1980, owning my own shops, but I have worked for the corporation since 2003,” said Ieoriatti.

Todd’s operation will make from scratch about 30 varieties of donuts each day including cake doughnuts, raised doughnuts, bear claws, twists, apple fritters and sausage rolls. Complementing the baked goods are cappuccino, flavored coffees, hot chocolate, juices, sodas and smoothies. A drive-thru is available and customers have the option of telephoning/faxing (518-993-2222) and e-mailing (dennisdaylightdonuts@frontier.com) their order.

Throughout the year-long project to bring Daylight Donuts to fruition, Todd has enjoyed the tireless encouragement and bureaucratic expertise of Fort Plain Mayor Guy Barton and the support of the village board of trustees. Barton was on hand to help conduct employee interviews, recommended manager Sue McGregor to Todd and personally drove to Herkimer this week to pick up the Board of Health permit the store needed to open.

McGregor and Todd both joined in praising the efforts of Barton to bring the business to Fort Plain. “He has been my salvation,” said McGregor. “Guy is a tireless supporter and ambassador of this village; we could not have accomplished this without him,” said Todd.

Barton has been known to sample a donut here and there over the past week as test batches emerged from the kitchen. “I’ve taken them all over the town, giving samples away; people just love them,” said Barton, who continued, “Fort Plain is on a roll. Everyone is receptive to the new businesses coming to town; it is all making Fort Plain a bigger and better place to live.”

Todd stated that this week would be the bakery’s soft opening with a grand opening scheduled for January. In the meantime, the staff will begin producing bread items like crusted dinner rolls, bagels, muffins and brownies. “Our product is not limited to what you see in the case; if you want something special, just ask for it,” said Todd.