People all over the world eat fried dough, and nobody does doughnuts like the United States. Doughnuts can be found year-round across this great nation in a huge array of flavors, shapes and styles.

But astute reader Susan Green suspects that America may be riven by a hidden doughnut divide. She observes that some parts of the country are saturated with a single doughnut brand, while others host a profusion of independent doughnut purveyors.

On National Doughnut Day, we wondered: Is Susan right? If so, can we map the nation’s deep-fried fault lines? And where is America’s true doughnut capital?

We kicked off our investigation with our friends at Yelp, who shared all the doughnut shop listings on the review site. By grouping stores with the same name and calculating the most common doughnut shop in groups of census tracts around the country, we found that our reader’s observation was right on: The United States is a federation of at least nine distinct doughnut nations.

Along the entire Eastern Seaboard, sprawling from Maine to Florida, we find Greater Dunkin’land. Here, Dunkin’ lives up to its billing as “America’s favorite coffee and baked goods chain.” (The Massachusetts-based behemoth, once known as Dunkin’ Donuts, dropped the Donuts in 2018 in a bid to transform itself “into the premier, beverage-led, on-the go-brand,” chief executive David Hoffmann told reporters at the time.)

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The Dunkin’ hegemony falters as we head West, however. Regional chains such as Daylight Donuts and Shipley Do-Nuts flourish in the middle of the country. Outposts favoring Donut Palace emerge in the Southwest. And through the Rockies and on toward the Pacific, a preference for doughnut independence prevails as smaller, local brands with three or fewer locations dominate broad swaths of the landscape — broken by occasional islands ruled by Winchell’s & Yum Yum (both owned by Winchell’s Donut House) and Mochinut (which features a mash-up of American doughnuts and Japanese mochi).

(Here, we’ll pause to note that our analysis includes only doughnut stores listed on Yelp, which may not reflect absolutely all of them. We also lumped together listings for “Krispy Kreme,” “Krispy Creme” and “Krispy Kreme Doughnuts,” on the assumption that they in fact refer to the same brand.)

Why do independent doughnut shops flourish out West while chains rule the East?

In Southern California and Texas, at least, credit goes to Cambodian immigrants. Multiple sources including doughnut documentarian Alice Gu contend that as many as 90 percent of independent doughnut stores in these areas are Cambodian-owned (although we could not independently verify that figure).

Cambodian immigrants came to the United States in the late 1970s as they fled the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge. One of them, Ted Ngoy, discovered doughnuts during a late-night shift at a California gas station. A year later, he bought his first doughnut shop. By opening new stores and selling them to recent arrivals, Ngoy helped create a network of more than 1,500 Cambodian-owned doughnut stores across Southern California.

The doughnut business turned out to be ideal for immigrant families looking to establish an economic toehold in America: The shops require relatively little start-up capital. Bakers clock in as early as 3 a.m. — brutal hours that don’t appeal to many American workers. And if the entire family pitches in, even labor costs can be kept low.

These efficiencies kept doughnut prices low, and bigger brands just couldn’t compete. According to California Sunday Magazine, low-cost, low-margin immigrant doughnut shops prevented Dunkin’ from establishing a major presence in the state until 2014. In 1995, Nancy Parker, then president of regional brand Winchell’s Donuts, attributed the brand’s shrinking footprint in the Golden State to the concentration of Cambodian-owned doughnut stores.

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Mapping the borders of Greater Dunkin’land and the Mochinut Republic tells us what kind of doughnuts we might find in those regions, but it doesn’t give us a lot of insight into how many doughnut shops are in each area — obviously a key metric for crowning America’s doughnut capital. So we returned to the data to find the places in the United States with the highest concentration of doughnut stores per person, or what we like to call doughnut density.

New England is the unquestioned king of doughnut density, with nearly three times as many doughnut shops per person as the rest of the country. That’s a holdover of doughnut history, according to Michael Krondl, food historian and author of “The Donut: History, Recipes, and Lore from Boston to Berlin.”

Before the 20th century, doughnuts were most strongly associated with home cooking in New England. Union soldiers in Maine received a doughnut feast before marching to the Civil War, and Yankees were often teased for their doughnut obsession. Then doughnuts — easy to make with limited ingredients — were served to soldiers on the front lines of the First and Second World Wars, popularizing them across the country.

Automated doughnut makers, first invented by Adolph Levitt in 1920, cut down on labor. As doughnut shops spread across the country, they hybridized with other treats like the German cruller and the Danish bismarck. Coffee and doughnuts became a common early-morning breakfast for factory workers and a symbol of the working class. In the 1934 film “It Happened One Night,” director Frank Capra emphasized class differences by having a recently fired newspaper reporter (Clark Gable) teach an heiress (Claudette Colbert) the proper way to dunk a doughnut.

Dunkin’ Donuts, one of the first American brands to embrace franchising, led the spread of doughnut stores away from industrial workers and into the suburbs. It also pioneered the wide variety of American doughnut flavors. Inspired by the 28 flavors of ice cream touted at Howard Johnson, founder Bill Rosenberg featured a menu of 52 flavors at the original Dunkin’ Donuts in Quincy, Mass., ranging from the familiar frosted strawberry to the slightly fusty-sounding prune butter lemonaire.

As Starbucks came to prominence in the 21st century, Dunkin’ Donuts began to advertise itself as an unpretentious, inexpensive brand more focused on coffee than doughnuts, according to food historian Bonnie Miller. Dunkin’ still offers doughnuts, but beverages now make up most of its sales.

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While the incredible concentration of Dunkin’ locations makes New England the champion of doughnut density, the huge variety of independent stores puts the West on top for doughnut diversity. In 2019, CNN and National Geographic both declared Los Angeles the doughnut capital of America.

Does the data agree? To find out, we measured doughnut store density and diversity for every metropolitan area in the nation with more than 1 million residents. The shocking and incontrovertible results decisively dethrone the City of Angels.

Because while Los Angeles has a lot of doughnuts, it’s no New England. Providence, R.I., Boston and Hartford, Conn., all have a much higher concentration of doughnut stores per resident.

And while Los Angeles has a lot of different kinds of doughnuts, it’s no Salt Lake City, which has an astonishing diversity of doughnut brands. Utah newspapers have speculated that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ prohibition on alcohol has created a vibrant market for artisanal desserts, and the city’s doughnut shops have specialized in an attempt to stand out. Multiple stores focus on mini-doughnuts, including a Peep-flavored offering for April. One store sells only stuffed doughnuts, including one with a passion fruit and cream cheese filling. Yet another makes custom “Greek baby doughnuts,” which strongly resemble doughnut holes.

Despite its lively doughnut scene, however, Salt Lake City has the second-lowest doughnut density of any of the metropolitan areas we analyzed.

So where is the doughnut sweet spot? The data shows that the best balance of doughnut density and diversity can be found in — drumroll, please — where else? Big D.

Dallas comes just behind Providence, Boston and Hartford for doughnut density. It’s also home to at least one shop representing each of the five biggest doughnut brands in the country: Dunkin’, Daylight Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Shipley Do-Nuts and Donut Palace. And the city boasts homegrown craft brands like Hypnotic, which offers the Canadian Healthcare (described as a long john with maple icing, a full strip of bacon and syrup on top) for a cool $3.50.

As the Department of Data — not the Department of Decision-making — we are inclined to declare not one but three doughnut capitals: Providence for sheer doughnut shop density. Salt Lake City for awesome brand diversity. And, of course, Dallas for offering the best of both worlds.

If all this doughnut deliberation has left you craving sweets and a solid meal, don’t worry. We found more than 1,500 doughnut shops with other kinds of food advertised in their names. Coffee is by far the most common accompaniment, but it’s not the only one.

Hybrid doughnut stores are most common in the West, where roughly 1 in 8 doughnut stores have other foods in their names. Texas doughnuts often go hand in hand with the Texas version of kolaches, described by Donut Palace operations manager Brent Blair as a sort of pig-in-a-blanket made with sausage and sweet dough. The Southeast likes chicken on its doughnuts, while New York is responsible for five of the country’s six doughnut and corn dog shops.

And while few of us would choose to pair doughnuts with sushi, it’s hard not to be impressed by this country’s dizzying array of creative doughnut flavors and accompaniments. That history of innovation and flexibility may have helped to ensure the doughnut’s longevity in America, said Carolyn Tillie, founder of the Bay Area Culinary Historians.

“Doughnuts are a mainstay,” said Tillie, who describes herself as a fried dough ho. “Frozen yogurt came and went, and gelato came and went. But everybody still loves doughnuts.”

correction

In an earlier version of this story, the doughnut-nations map failed to include a region north of San Francisco that is dominated by Dunkin'. The map has been corrected.

Ahoy there! The Department of Data covets quantitative queries. What do you wonder about: What is each state’s favorite dessert? How have other dishes changed since arriving in the United States? Just ask!

If your question inspires a column, we’ll send you an official Department of Data button and ID card. This week, the button goes to Susan Green, who — full disclosure — is this columnist’s mother. Though they won’t get buttons, we do want to thank the fine people at Dunkin’, Krispy Kreme, Bread Furst, District Donuts and Mochinut, who unknowingly sold us doughnuts during the creation of this column.

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