On Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, Pure Eats in downtown Lexington dealt with an influx of orders. Since their establishment is known to have the best donuts around, many people decided to order themed donuts in order to celebrate the holiday of love. With over 173 dozens of donuts requested from one single donut machine, employees struggled with completing this monumental task.

Each holiday, Valentine’s Day especially, Pure Eats has themes or flavors associated with donut design to increase demand and encourage festivities. For example, on St. Patrick’s Day, green icing and sprinkles were incorporated into donuts, and for Christmas, red and green colored sprinkles flourished on each one. 

Senior Victoria Sanders, an employee of Pure Eats, adores their donut designs.

“My favorite design of the night was Princess Belle-themed, because it was white with yellow sprinkles and then, a little rose in the middle. I thought that was really cute for Valentine’s Day, ” said Sanders. 

12 workers united together during the night of, and only managed to get through it by living off of energy drinks and melted Starbucks coffee from Waynesboro. The task was completed between 2-3 in the morning: a long, hectic process of icing, topping, packaging, and moving donuts to a place to store them. Some orders were one same flavor, but 20 were mixed; the normal order was 2 dozen. 

Senior Rylie Light, who is an employee of Pure Eats, explains the tedious process of differentiated orders by VMI and W&L students specifying little boxes and notes as gifts. 

‘’We wrote down, ‘we love you, Mom and Dad’ on the boxes, so there was a lot we had to write down that slowed the process,” said Light.

In the following two days, Rylie Light and Victoria Sanders did not attend school because of their exhausted state. The late night took a toll on both students’ capability and mental state, therefore recovery time was necessary. Unfortunately, no time-and-a-half or bonus was given to employees from working this extended shift.

This establishment will remain making new donut designs for Easter, Halloween, and other assorted holidays, so swing by and give them a try!