GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Fat Tuesday is almost here and West Michigan bakeries have spent months preparing. One Grand Rapids Westside staple, though, has been forced to make a change.
The Polish holiday was created to rid households of sugar and fat before Lent, but now has been popularized for the famous paczki sold all over the country, especially here in West Michigan.
“It is like heaven. It's like super doughy dough, and then so much filling and then sugar all the way around," said Lindsy Hoezee, co-owner of Sandy's Donuts on Leonard, describing their beloved paczki.
Hoezee and her team at Sandy’s have been working day and night since January to make tens of thousands of the treats just in time for Fat Tuesday.
Or, as Hoezee refers to it, “It is paczki day!”
Sandy’s Donuts has been open for 52 years, and even longer before that as a different shop called Dream Donuts.
Hoezee remembers visiting her great-grandmother at St. Ann's, the nursing home nearby, and wheeling her over to Sandy’s for donuts when she was a kid.
All these years later, she now co-owns it with her husband.
“It truly is like a generational thing. And I'm not the only one," she said.
She loves that no matter how much they remodel, it remains a place for families to meet over decades.
“Sandy’s is a bubble. And it's like a time trap," she explained. “You will come in here and it is multiple generations at the tables that just have their time that they always meet here.”
For a place that prides itself on tradition, it had to make some adjustments before this year's Fat Tuesday celebration.
A year ago, Sandy’s was paying $3.12 for 60 eggs. Today, they’re paying $22.92. They're seeing similar increases with flour and sugar, too.
“We're paying exponentially more for every single ingredient," Hoezee said.
Thanks to the inflated costs, they've had to raise the price for paczki from $1.50 a piece to $1.75 since last year.
“It's not because we're making more money," she said, "We aren't, it is because of the price of goods," she said.
This leads to nerves for Hoezee and her staff as they hope for a crowd Tuesday.
“It's not like you can send your stuff back if you don't use that, like you have to guesstimate the best you can based on the year before and just pray that it works out," she said.
Still, Hoezee says she wouldn’t change a thing about working for a community staple like Sandy’s.
“People can have the worst day and 99% of our customers still come in and they are so happy. And it makes all of us so happy," Hoezee said, “Doughnuts make people happy. Paczkis make people happy.”
She loves getting to be a part of West Michigan's tradition each and every day.
“It's truly not a job, like, I don't ever dread coming here," she said, smiling, “It's my favorite.”
Sandy's is open from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fat Tuesday and will be taking walk-in orders all day. They sell prune raspberry, lemon, apple, white cream, custard, chocolate cream and blueberry-flavored paczki.
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