Donut Professor shops permanently close across Metro

The coronavirus outbreak was the last straw for one local business.

The three Donut Professor stores in the Metro closed its doors for good this week.

The Donut Professor in Elkhorn has been a regular meeting place.

Co-owner David Larsen says restrictions on customers in the building was just part of the problem.

“We started seeing the effects pretty much right away as far as business slowing down, people canceling. We do a lot of banquets in the hotels and they started canceling,” he said.

Along with businesses that now have employees off or have them working from home, the store also provided donuts to gas stations and Quik shops in Omaha, Council Bluffs and Fremont.

They were asked to individually wrap donuts to sell there.

“And to do that properly, meet national guidelines, you need a specialized machine, Saran Wrap machine and it's really slow for the amount of donuts we do. We would need to hire a couple more people and our overhead would be way too high for the cost of a donut.”

Larsen thanks the loyal customers he would see daily but says he felt it was time to stop the bleeding.

“In the long run, this is probably the best decision. I think this is going to be a long term problem.”

24 employees lost their jobs. Larsen says about half were family members.

He says he will miss seeing the young people he once hired come back with their families to visit.