City Donut

City Donut has operated in Orange Beach, Alabama since 2013, a family owned and locally independent shop that its own website describes as the city’s oldest donut shop. The business sits at 25751 Perdido Beach Boulevard, Suite A-5, in the same general stretch of the beach highway as several other Orange Beach food and drink businesses, making it an easy stop to pair with a day already spent along that corridor. The phone number for the shop is 251-981-3688, and the family ownership behind it has stayed in place through more than a decade of operation on the same stretch of road.

The core of the menu is built around donuts made fresh from scratch daily, with the shop’s team baking through the night and into the day to keep the case stocked. Options include classic glazed and cake donuts, iced and topped varieties, candy and cereal topped versions, cream and jelly filled donuts, apple fritters, glazed croissants, and plain donut holes for anyone who wants a smaller bite.

Because the donuts are made in batches through the day rather than all at once in the morning, the shop notes that menu availability can shift depending on what has just come out of the fryer, and it recommends visiting earlier in the day for the widest selection and freshest options. That daily rhythm is part of what keeps the shop’s case looking full even on a busy summer weekend.

City Donut has expanded well past donuts alone. The shop carries twenty flavors of ice cream, along with custom milkshakes, specialty sundaes, and banana splits, plus a novelty item it calls a donut slider, an ice cream sandwich built with a donut in place of the usual cookie. Boba drinks round out the menu, available with either traditional tapioca pearls or fruit flavored popping boba. Taken together, the donut case and the ice cream counter give the shop two separate reasons to draw a crowd rather than just one.

That range of ice cream, shakes, sundaes, and boba pushes City Donut well beyond a typical morning only donut counter. Paired with hours that run from 6 in the morning until 10 at night, seven days a week, the shop covers both an early breakfast donut run and a late night dessert stop after dinner elsewhere on the strip, a combination that few single storefronts in Orange Beach manage to offer under one roof.

The shop has picked up outside recognition to go with its longevity. It was ranked the number one donut shop in Alabama in USA Today’s 2024 Readers’ Poll, and Delish.com separately named it the state’s best donut shop, both notable distinctions for a small, independently owned business competing against far larger chains and operations across Alabama. Recognition like that tends to go to bakeries in bigger cities, which makes the win notable for a shop operating out of a single small commercial suite on the beach highway.

For a beach town with a lot of transient, seasonal food businesses, City Donut’s more than a decade of continuous, family run operation on Perdido Beach Boulevard stands out on its own. The shop has kept the same basic formula the entire time: fresh donuts, long hours, and a straightforward, no frills approach to a category of business that often leans on novelty instead.

Whether the stop is for a dozen classic glazed donuts on a beach morning, a donut slider in the middle of the afternoon, or a late evening milkshake and boba drink, the shop has built its following on fresh product and long hours rather than novelty alone, backed up by the recognition it has earned outside of Orange Beach as well. For visitors mapping out a day on Perdido Beach Boulevard, it functions as a single stop that covers breakfast, an afternoon treat, and a late night dessert run in one small storefront.