NH Doughnut Co. opens in Bedford, expands menu offerings
When Amanda Baril opened the first New Hampshire Doughnut Co. on Route 4 in Chichester in 2019, her concept was simple — an outlet where you create your own doughnuts, choosing from a variety of toppings to customize them not unlike how you might an ice cream sundae.
Fast-forward just three short years, and Baril’s business has since evolved in a big way, introducing two additional brick-and-mortar locations, delving into brewery collaborations, doughnut pop-ups and custom orders for weddings, and even converting a former horse trailer into a miniature food truck. Her newest shop, now open on South River Road in Bedford, has further expanded the menu to offer yeast ring and filled doughnuts, fritters and French crullers.
It’s quite the success story, as Baril’s husband Chad pointed out, when you consider that all of this took place amid a global pandemic. The original New Hampshire Doughnut Co. opened back in late August 2019, some six months before Covid would arrive in the Granite State.
At the time, the business started out with a basic vanilla cake doughnut and a completely customizable list of coatings, toppings and drizzles to choose from. But as Amanda Baril quickly came to find out, most customers would prove to have a hard time choosing their own.
“We ended up putting out a favorites menu, and we found that people were really just choosing from the favorites. So we started putting those out and ready to go and people would just be like, ‘I’ll take this, this and this,’” she said. “They wanted the variety, but they also wanted it ready for them.”
In February 2020, the Barils signed a lease to open a second shop in downtown Concord, in the space formerly occupied by the Capital Deli. It was around that time, Amanda Baril said, when they decided to shift to a weekly doughnut menu that would regularly change with new offerings.
“Every week we would update the menu … and it would be different, and people really loved that,” she said. “We had the key normal favorites but then we’d change up everything else.”
The pandemic’s arrival that March ended up delaying the opening of the Concord shop all the way to December 2020. It’s unique for only operating as a retail storefront — according to Baril, the plan was always to bake everything fresh in Chichester and ship to Concord every morning.
Special doughnut-themed weeks, such as Harry Potter, Disney and others, also entered the mix.
By the summer of 2021, the couple began looking for a new location in the Manchester or Bedford area; they signed a lease on the South River Road property by the end of that year. The buildout of that space was relatively quick, Amanda Baril said, but ongoing supply chain issues with their equipment delayed their opening to mid-September of this year. For similar reasons, they have also since shifted to a monthly doughnut menu.
Today, the Barils now have staff members wholly dedicated to all different aspects of the business, from the newly available crullers in Bedford to gluten-free and dairy-free doughnuts made in Chichester, which has since transitioned into a production-only facility. They recruited Vanessa Robinson as a baker — she formerly worked at Van Otis Chocolates in Manchester.
“I was like, ‘I need to find somebody with experience who knows flavors better than I do,’ and she has been fantastic,” Amanda Baril said. “I am so happy to have her on board because she really adds so much.”
New Hampshire Doughnut Co. even now has its own wedding division, regularly fulfilling catering orders for doughnut walls, doughnut buffets and other gatherings large and small.
Chad Baril added that they’ve begun partnering with local colleges for internship opportunities — a student even designed their current logo — and have worked with several breweries to host doughnut pop-ups. Some, for instance, feature homemade icings made with locally brewed beer — on Friday, Dec. 9, and Friday, Dec. 30, they are expected to return to Lithermans Limited Brewery in Concord.
While there are no plans to open a fourth location, Amanda Baril said she hopes to eventually find a larger available space in Concord where they can bake doughnuts.
“I think when we had it written on paper before we opened up in Chichester, it’s come full circle now, I would say,” Chad Baril said. “The creativeness of Amanda and her staff was kind of the awesome curveball that we got, but now it’s starting to get back into that community. … We want to touch people’s lives and create a kind of legacy, sort of like, ‘Look at what we did.’”
New Hampshire Doughnut Co.
Where: 410 S. River Road, Bedford, 782-8968; 2 Capital Plaza, Concord, 715-5097 (a third location, on Route 4 in Chichester, is now used as a production facility only — no walk-in service)
Hours: Both the Bedford and Concord locations are open Wednesday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., or until doughnuts sell out
More info: Visit nhdoughnutco.com, email [email protected] or find them on Facebook and Instagram @nhdohco
Featured photo: Photo courtesy of NH Doughnut Co.
