Pinkbox Doughnuts expands in Utah to big crowds and long lines

SALT LAKE CITY — When Pinkbox Doughnuts opened its first shop in northern Utah at American Fork, Utah, people camped out in order to get their hands on the gourmet doughnuts.

This week, Pinkbox opened its first shop in Salt Lake County on State Street in Sandy, and the grand opening was host to big crowds and long lines once again.

The history of Pinkbox Doughnuts

Pinkbox was started in Las Vegas in 2012. Amazing Brands acquired the shop when there were just two locations in Las Vegas.

"It's not just your everyday corner doughnut shop," said Michael Crandall, the chief business officer at Amazing Brands. "It is an absolute experience from the second you pull in the driveway, everything on the exterior, to when you walk in the shop. It is interactive and is a very experiential brand, but most importantly, it's the best doughnuts, all made fresh every single day."

Every Pinkbox Doughnuts is corporate-owned and operated.

Utah was the first place outside the Las Vegas area to open a Pinkbox Doughnuts location, starting in St. George first.

"We love Utah," Crandall said. "Any time anyone from Utah had come to Vegas to experience our doughnuts — we got just such amazing responses from them. And for a long time, a lot of people in Utah were saying, 'bring Pinkbox to Utah, bring Pinkbox to Utah.' So we made it a point that Utah was the first state we were going to grow in outside of Nevada."

What makes Pinkbox Doughnuts unique?

What is it that sets Pinkbox Doughnuts apart from other doughnut shops? Crandall said it boils down to three things:

• "We believe our doughnuts are the best," he said. "We use the best ingredients. We even use, you know, really good oils that we fry the doughnuts in. Everything that goes into the doughnuts, we take extra special care and attention to, to make sure we are using the best ingredients."
• "The second thing is our staff, our customer service, and the loyalty that our employees have to the brand and that our employees have to our customers is incredible. It makes for such an amazing experience when you walk in Pinkbox.
• The third thing is the actual experience. It really is an experiential, whimsical brand. Every square inch of a Pinkbox Doughnuts, from the ceiling to the walls to the floors, on the inside and outside of a Pinkbox, is thought through and designed to be part of the experience.

For the first time ever, the Sandy location has what Pinkbox calls the "Pinkycade," which is a Pinkbox-themed arcade right inside the doughnut shop.

What customers can expect from Pinkbox Doughnuts

When asked what customers can expect when they walk into a Pinkbox Doughnuts, Crandall said it's like "being transformed into a different world, a doughnut planet."

He continued, "I think the number one thing a customer can expect is to walk in and immediately smile and leave with a smile, and that's really important to us."

What I ordered

I snagged a box of a half dozen doughnuts to try during the media event preview before the grand opening, and I'm glad I got to try a few different doughnuts.

I must say, the quality of the doughnuts is fresh and delicious, and I would say the gourmet doughnuts lived up to the hype.

I ranked them in order of which ones I liked best, but honestly, they were all tasty, fresh doughnuts.

Here are the ones I tried:

• Maple bar doughnut: It's your basic run-of-the-mill flavor, but this one delivered on taste and flavor. It might be the best maple bar I've ever tasted.
• Biscoff Cookie Monster: This is a raised cinnamon-sugar coated doughnut generously filled with rich cookie butter whip, topped with another generous helping of creamy Biscoff mousse, and finished with a Biscoff drizzle and Biscoff cookie. Between this and the maple bar were probably my favorite doughnuts I tried.
• Vegas Cream: I had to try the namesake doughnut, and it was amazing. It comes with a rich chocolate-frosted shell and is generously stuffed with Bavarian cream. It's exactly what you want from a cream-filled doughnut — enough chocolate frosting and cream that each bite is a flavor explosion.
• Banana Puddin': This one is a glazed vanilla cake doughnut topped with house-made banana pudding, whipped cream, graham cracker crust and a Nilla wafer. It's sweet and banana-y and exactly what you would expect.
• Kentucky Cornbread: It's a cake doughnut covered in icing topped with a huge portion of butter-flavored vanilla buttercream. It's rich and sweet and flavorsome all at once.
• The Pink doughnut: This is a classic pink doughnut with sprinkles. I'm not a huge sprinkles person, but this doughnut was still good.

Related topics