Grocery Store-Bought Donut Brands, Ranked Worst To Best

Some of the best donuts ever can be procured almost anywhere in the U.S. From the best grocery store chains for budget shoppers to upscale food emporiums, there's a bakery on the premises where the donuts come out hot every morning. Chains like Dunkin', Krispy Kreme, and a resurgent Tim Hortons dot the landscape with hundreds or thousands of locations. And yet still, there exists a preference, and a huge market, for packaged, shelf-stable donuts. Most likely prepared at a large industrial facility in massive quantities hundreds or thousands of miles away from the average store, these are the kinds of donuts you'll find in convenience stores, big box stores, and supermarkets of every size. They're shelved right alongside the snacks, the candy, or the loaves of bread.

These types of products all seem to take on the same format: dense, cake-like donuts given a coating or frosting of chocolate, powdered sugar, or cinnamon, perfect for keeping in a pantry for days or even weeks — an advantage over fresh-baked, eat-them-now yeast-type donuts. There exists a staggering number of brands of these donuts, and so many flavors churned out on a regular basis, made just for certain stores or by dedicated mega-bakeries who distribute them everywhere. Here's The Takeout's ranking of packaged grocery store donut brands, from least palatable to the ones that can contend with hot and fresh donuts.

Great Value, the in-house brand name for generic, low-cost products sold at Walmart and Sam's Club stores, tellingly says nothing nor promises anything about the actual quality of the item. That designation tells customers that the food they're about to buy is inexpensive, nothing more and nothing less. That's about all that can be said for the Great Value Donut Variety. It's sold in a box of 10 suggested servings, which are rolls of mini donuts encased in plastic. Inside each pack come six tiny powdered sugar-caked cake donuts or six chocolate frosting enrobed gem donuts.

Engineered for a grab and go breakfast or to pack into a bag lunch, these donuts are cheap and they sure do taste like it. The donut beneath all of the coatings is nondescript and painfully dry. The powdered sugar and chocolate icing would theoretically help the treat get down the throat if they also weren't dry. The sugar turns gummy upon first bite and the chocolate breaks into slimy bits. Both coatings are so loaded with fake and lousy industrial sugar facsimiles don't quite cover up the terribleness of the donut itself while also leading to tooth pain. The Donut Variety donuts are stale as a matter of course, likely baked months ago and loaded with preservatives.

The company represented by a small child does big business — it's synonymous with individually-portioned, powerfully sweet, and plastic-sealed products that fall somewhere between candy and baked goods. One would think that the storied Little Debbie would be well suited to have the best miniature donuts available on the open market, but the snack giant really ought to stick to the Nutty Buddy and Oatmeal Cream Pie. Little Debbie Mini Donuts — in the chocolate-coated and powdered sugar-dusted styles — are unequivocally bad-tasting and just of a generally low quality.

The insides of the donut are so lacking the moisture needed for a pleasant experience so severely that they look dry and are even crumbly to the touch. The toppings don't do much to bury the lackluster cake donut beneath the surface. The Mini Frosted Donuts include a layer of sweaty chocolate topping so thin that it doesn't even cover the cake all the way. Nor does it really taste like chocolate, and for that matter, neither does the confectioners' sugar on the Mini Powdered Donuts. It's just powerfully, unrelentingly sweet; there's no nuance or mouthfeel of real chocolate or real powdered sugar in the mix, respectively. At least it's over quickly. Little Debbie's donuts melt altogether in the mouth with concerning speed, suggesting a powerful array of preservatives and chemicals that came together to commit a nefarious act of food science.

Kroger's private branded packaged donuts immediately disappoint. Sold in a variety of permutations with different flavors represented, the big three offerings of plain cake donut, and cake donuts covered in a firm chocolate coating, and a powdered sugar blend, are all remarkably lacking in taste. Sure, the cheap, chocolate-colored and chocolate flavored-coating and powdered sugar bring a wallop of bracing sweetness, but they don't taste like anything themselves beyond imitation chocolate and generic sugar, respectively. But that poor Kroger cake donut, without anything to distract or confuse consumers, is as plain as is physically possible. It doesn't taste like anything at all. There's no discernible flavor whatsoever, nothing reminiscent of a donut, cake, or some other pastry made up of the same simple ingredients of flour, eggs, dough, sweetener, and a bevy of stabilizers and preservatives.

As profoundly lacking in flavor, Kroger donuts boast an abundance of texture. That's not a good thing. A moist donut is a wonderful thing; these donuts are more than moist, however — they're wet. It's as if they were soaked in a liquid just before leaving the donut factory to ensure that they're moist when the box is opened by the consumer. And none of this staves off staleness. That wetness quickly dissipates, as these donuts are likely to dry out upon swallowing and get stuck in your throat.

While there are many discontinued Hostess snacks we'll probably never eat again, the venerable baking company remains firm on making sure its white, waxy bags of miniature donuts, which it calls "Donettes," are available in virtually every store in the United States that sells food. These Donettes, in the main flavors of Powdered, Frosted, and Crunch, are omnipresent, and that's probably the reason why Hostess can tout on the packaging that the line is "America's #1 Donut."

On a subjective ranking of packaged, grocery store donuts, however, Donettes are far from the top of the heap. Those buzzy flavor indicators of Powdered, Frosted, and Crunch refer to powdered sugar, chocolate icing, and a sweet coconut paste, respectively. What each adds (or subtracts) varies greatly by variety. The powdered sugar stays on the donut, rather than immediately rubbing off on the consumer's fingers or accumulating at the bottom of the bag, for example. The chocolate melts in the mouth instead of into a mucky grease while offering a hint of fake but still pleasant chocolate flavor. That crunchy topping is more chewy than anything, and it's super-sweet, greasy, and crystalline, an agreeable sticky mess. The toppings are necessary to support the donut within, which comes out firm and not too dry but which is otherwise unexceptional.

Favorite Day-branded products, particularly the packaged baked goods, can be a red flag when shopping at Target. That's the house brand at the big box retailer, many of which feature a moderate to full-sized grocery section, and at first glance, it doesn't appear like the Favorite Day donuts are going to be specifically requested or sought out by any aficionado of the sweetened, round breakfast treat. Favorite Day Bakery Assorted Mini Donuts, available only at Target, get poor marks on presentation. Exactly eleven ounces worth of small donuts are crammed into a plastic tub, and all three varieties jockey for position with such abandon that the cinnamon-sugar dust from one gets mixed in with the powdered sugar on another, and all of that winds up on the plain cake donuts. They're bruised, messy, and just kind of look stale.

Appearances aren't to be trusted with Favorite Day Bakery donuts. They were surprisingly moist and very bouncy. The bakers at whatever facility Target uses to make its donuts know that there's going to be plenty of sweet coming from the directly or indirectly applied cinnamon-sugar and powdered sugar that they wisely pull back on sugar in the dough. All that sweetness would overshadow the pleasing texture inside, offering airy, flaky layers. Somehow, someway, Target's generic donuts are a low-key and successful imitation of that fad baked good of a few years back, the cronut.

Tastykake is a brand of snack cakes and baked goods beloved in and around Philadelphia, where its founders started making sweet treats more than 100 years ago. It does what competitors like Hostess and Little Debbie do, but noticeably better. Its bags of miniature donuts are otherwise unassuming, looking identical to so many other products made by so many other big bakery concerns. Tastykake's mini donuts are easily the best in class, because every part of the product is elevated. Light and fluffy on the inside, the cake donuts, rendered small, taste like they were baked maybe a few hours ago, and in a small batch. They maintain their freshness very well, and they can not only withstand toppings but work in concert with them, too. The powdered sugar is applied conservatively so as not to not disguise the great donut underneath but work to make something more than the sum of its parts.

Even better is Tastykake's chocolate edition. The coating is thinner than what one will find on other grocery store donut brands, but it's actually richer in complex chocolate taste and less sweet, too. It attractively crackles and crumbles on the donut and in the hand, and it helps flavor the fluffy cake hiding below.

Full-fledged, real-deal donut shops still serve cake donuts as much as they do yeast donuts, and Dunford Donuts adhere closer to that type than they do other boxed, shipped, and preserved cake donut brands. They're also by far the most expensive grocery store retail donut out there, with a box of six pieces selling for about $9. That's actually a way higher per-unit price ($1.50) that one would find on a freshly made cake donut from the same grocery stores that stock Dunford Donuts, or even the nationally-known donut shops that Dunford so wants to emulate.

While a single Dunford offering may not be worth the price, it's objectively a very good donut. The recipe results in a buttermilk-type donut that's light on texture and rich in flavor; there are strong notes of vanilla, coconut, lemon, and birthday cake in the company's white cake donuts. They pack just the right amount of moisture, but that's if they're consumed within a day of purchase. They dry out very fast, which just adds support to the notion that Dunford Donuts might as well have come from a local donut shop. The package is complete with a great appearance. These look like donuts ought to. First off, they're absolutely gigantic, and all get a generous heap of eye-catching icing and plenty of sprinkles. That adds sweetness to complement the buttery, velvety donut without ever overtaking it.

Made obvious by this round of review of factory-baked donuts made for wide regional and national distribution, the kind of donuts far more suitable for packaging and a long shelf life is the cake donut. With a little juicing from shelf-stable ingredients and preservatives, they can withstand much more time in transit and on shelves than can yeast-based, light and airy donuts. That's why it's so surprising and worthy of praise that a company that churns out who knows how many baked goods every day can make a packaged, long-lasting, shippable and storable product that replicates the experience of eating a just-made yeast donut.

Sold primarily at store siblings Safeway and Albertsons, as well as at many other supermarkets and food outlets, trays of Two-Bite Iced Donuts in plastic packages can be found stacked on tables in bakery departments, mere inches from the ready-to-eat yeast donuts often produced recently in that very location. But Two-Bite Iced Donuts are irresistible because of the presentation: A box comes with 12 uniform yeast-donuts but made uniquely different with the perfectly thin amount of icing, in chocolate, vanilla, or maple varieties, and then decorated with a flavor stripe or a moderate portion of sprinkles. My eyes lured them in, but the clean and precise donut delivers. The consumer winds up with, yes, two bites of perfect donut, chewy and soft in the middle and not overburdened by icing that is just sweet enough, and never cloying.

Franz Bakery products can be found in grocery, convenience, and variety stores across most of the western U.S., and its line of donuts are built around a flagship product, Old Fashioned Donuts. That's Franz's version of the old-fashioned cake donut, and it's prepared in the historically correct way with a hard, jagged surface with ribs jutting out that give a flower-like appearance. Franz's Old Fashioned Donuts are a taste of donut history, and unlike every other large-scale packaged donut available, they have the taste and texture of a fried donut. Donuts, after all, are supposed to be fried. Franz's Old-Fashioned Donuts are crispy and light to the touch but give a hefty, substantial bite. They're moist and oily and melt in the mouth, and they're more reminiscent of a fritter-style donut than their boxed shelf-mates.

Franz's other donuts are old-fashioned ones with something extra. A chocolate variety encases that great donut inside of a crispy, lightly dissolving hard chocolate shell that tastes real and has a velvety texture. Lemon, cherry, and blueberry flavors of Franz donuts add just enough hint of tangy sweet-and-fruit flavor to the solid foundation of the creamy, buttermilk, cake donut at the core.

Entenmann's enjoys a reputation as the fancier, more high-end packaged pastry and baked product brand. If the donuts the company makes are any indication, it's with good reason. Both multi-flavor assortments of cake-style donuts purchased — the Classic variety pack and Softees — included examples that could pass for just-baked, independent-shop developed and baked donuts. The dough is so soft, bouncy, and delicate in the regular Entenmann's donuts; the makeup of a Softees donut is downright spongy. Every flavor represented, from powdered sugar to old fashioned to cinnamon-dusted to the chocolate crusted and more, tasted airy and fresh right out of the box and then virtually the same several days later.

That feat of textural perfection would be enough to send Entenmann's donuts to the top of this list, but they're also wonderfully flavorful, too. Thin and more-ring like than dense and doughy, these donuts have a light sensibility clearly made with real dairy products. The cake part of the treat is only lightly sweetened, allowing the toppings and coatings to do that part of the job. Entenmann's didn't phone in those ingredients either. Powdered sugar is used judiciously, the basic glaze seems to contain a hint of zesty lemon, and the cinnamon-dusted donut promises just the faintest bit of spice.

I considered for inclusion and ranking the donut brands sold nationally or in large regions in the United States, produced by mass-market bakery companies under particular brand names or sold by major grocery and retail chains under their house or private labels. Samples of each name brand and store brand, in as many different flavors and varieties as selection allowed, were obtained at large, multi-unit supermarkets and big box stores with grocery sections.

As multiple flavors of each brand were purchased, the donuts were judged and rated on their own merits, as well as relative to other donuts made by the same manufacturer and to competitors' products. I examined each donut on factors including taste, mouthfeel, and texture — of the baked part of the donut, its toppings, and the whole endeavor. The freshest possible donuts were procured of each brand, based on the farthest out expiration or sell-by dates. To form a well-rounded opinion, each donut was sampled on the day of purchase and then again, one to three days later, to judge stability and consistency.