![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/b1f67ad4a43bb76cdf247507763dd00fb9-Voodoo-Doughnut-Homer-and-Dozen.rsquare.w400.png\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n The Homer doughnuts are modeled after the Simpsons ideal.
\n Photo: Courtesy of Voodoo Doughnuts\n <\/p>\n
The world was a very different place in 2003 when a scrappy storefront squeezed between two nightclubs in Portland, Oregon\u2019s Old Town started serving bacon-maple doughnuts next to vegan fritters. The d\u00e9cor included a vintage chandelier, stained-glass windows, and hot-pink walls. \u201cOf course, a 24-hour, crazy doughnut shop that put bacon on a doughnut and sold a doughnut shaped like a blunt could work in early-aughts Portland,\u201d says Kevin Wateman, who started working at Voodoo Doughnut<\/a> in 2007. (He\u2019s now the creative designer.)<\/p>\n The store got its start when the founders \u2014 Kenneth \u201cCat Daddy\u201d Pogson and Richard \u201cTrace\u201d Shannon \u2014 realized the downtown area lacked a doughnut shop. That piqued Pogson\u2019s interest, since he had been working in fine dining and was ready for a change. \u201cPortland was starting to get the notoriety of being such a foodie city,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it was my rebellion of that. I\u2019m just like, \u2018I want something down and dirty at midnight.\u2019\u201d He\u2019d also been moonlighting as a wrestling announcer, which helped him to understand his target audience. \u201cWe knew we\u2019d fit in with this weird little culture that Portland was,\u201d he says. The financial considerations made sense, too. \u201cTwenty-three years ago, the raw cost of a doughnut was like two and a half cents.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the doughnuts were a hard sell at first. Take, for one, the now-mundane-sounding Bacon Maple Bar, which Pogson says was \u201cinstantly reviled\u201d by skeptics. Now, of course, it\u2019s an institution, along with the Voodoo Doll, a doll-shaped raised yeast number crammed with raspberry jelly, slathered with chocolate frosting, and held together by a salty pretzel. Even if not all of their experiments \u2014 like ill-fated attempts at topping doughnuts with NyQuil and Tums \u2014worked. Portland became synonymous with weirdness, and Voodoo was in the vanguard. By 2007, Anthony Bourdain had featured the shop (and its Bacon Maple Bar) on No Reservations, cementing its national fame.<\/p>\n Expansion began locally in 2008, and Voodoo migrated out of state, first to Colorado, five years later. In 2017, the private equity firm Fundamental Capital took a majority stake<\/a>, and expansion ratcheted up along with more corporate sensibilities. \u201cI like to think when we open a new Voodoo in a new city, we bring a little bit of that old-school Portland with us but allow the city to shape us, too,\u201d Waterman says. (In its early days, the shop hosted c<\/a>ompetitions to see who could stack the most doughnuts on his, uh, member. The winner got $50 and a cream-filled Cock \u2018n\u2019 Balls doughnut \u2014 almost certainly\u00a0making it the only Fundamental holding that once hosted dick-measuring<\/a> contests.)<\/p>\n When it opens in Union Square West this summer, the New York outpost will be the first in the Northeast. A portrait of Bourdain will hang in the store so fans can raise a Maple Bacon Bar in his honor, or one of the New York\u2013specific creations like a Big Apple (cinnamon frosted, fruit filled) or a Glazed Glizzy (a hot dog tucked into a bun-shaped glazed doughnut and zigzagged with maple frosting).<\/p>\n The prices will be in line with other doughnut shops, but will Gen-Z New Yorkers line up for Maple Bacon Bars and blunt-shaped \u201cblazers\u201d the way they do for Greek Froyo outfits that all sell the same thing with nearly identical branding and indistinguishable \u201caesthetic\u201d interiors? In addition to changing tastes, New York is arguably in the midst of a doughnut heyday. Competition includes Cloudy Donut Co.<\/a>, Elbow Bakery<\/a>, and Fan-Fan<\/a>, plus imports such as I\u2019m Donut?<\/a> from Tokyo; Homie\u2019s<\/a>, the spinoff of Homers<\/a> in Montreal; Cops<\/a> from Toronto; and L.A.\u2019s Randy\u2019s<\/a>. And then of course we have our own homegrown chain from the era that birthed Voodoo in the first place, Doughnut Plant<\/a>. On that last name, Pogson is quick to make a distinction. \u201cI have respect for Doughnut Plant, but that\u2019s a gourmet doughnut. We\u2019re exotic doughnuts,\u201d he clarifies. \u201cWe took old, classic doughnuts and put weird stuff on them.\u201d<\/p>\n Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.
\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the , issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n