Well before dawn, customers stop by the Sweet Shop in a ritual that is repeated countless times every day.
Tom Russo | Daily Reporter
GREENFIELD — There were a lot of laughs coming from a table of seniors inside the Sweet Shop on Saturday morning, Oct. 30, where a group of regulars gathers each day to enjoy some doughnuts, hot coffee and a bit of camaraderie.
Jane White of Greenfield has been stopping by the shop every morning for at least 30 years, except for a spell on Tuesdays — when a large group of retired Ford workers would take up all the tables.
“The doughnuts are exceptional, and the staff is just as sweet as can be,” said White, who loves bantering with the second-generation owner, Monty Guinn.
Guinn’s parents opened The Sweet Shop on a whim and a prayer 50 years ago this month — in November 1971.
Stanley and Mary Guinn have both passed away, but they left behind a legacy that has stood the test of time.
Their four sons are the backbone of the business. Monty Guinn, 54, the youngest, manages the business side of the operation.
His brothers — Marland, 61; Dennis, 59; and Kenny, 56 — arrive around midnight each night to make the doughnuts.
“Me and my brothers have done this ever since we were little,” said Guinn.
“A lot of time we’d come in before school and work. We just kind of stayed with it after we graduated,” he said.
Over the years, all their wives have also worked at the shop.
“It’s always been a family thing,” said Guinn, as his wife, Tina, waited on customers last week.
“I’ve got a nephew now who’s been cutting doughnuts for the last 10 years. He’s the next generation,” he said.
Each morning, the Guinn family makes several hundred dozen doughnuts, the most popular being a regular glazed yeast doughnut ring.
While many are bought at the shop, hundreds of doughnuts are delivered to local gas stations, factories and hotels each morning.
Guinn knows his parents would be proud to see all the people who still line up each day for a bit of sweet Greenfield nostalgia.
“On weekends it’s not uncommon to have a line snaking out the door,” said Guinn on a recent weekday, as customers popped in and out of the shop for a quick breakfast fix.
When COVID first emerged — closing non-essential businesses for nearly three months — the Sweet Shop was declared an essential business and was able to stay open.
“A lot of people would tell us, ‘You guys are doing great. We want to make sure to give you as much business as we can, to take care of you because you meant a lot to us.’ It was a really neat thing,” Guinn recalled.
One of his favorite memories at the shop was on Mother’s Day last year, when all the seating at restaurants was closed due to COVID.
“We had people standing six feet apart out the door and through the parking lot, all the way out to (U.S.) 40, waiting in line to take doughnuts home to their mothers and their wives. I thought that was pretty cool,” Guinn said.
While he’s seen the growth and change happening around him over the years, Guinn is proud to still offer the same light and flaky doughnuts at the same little shop his parents ran when he was kid.
The first Sweet Shop was actually just down the road from the current location, on the northwest corner of Main and Franklin streets, in a house that was converted to hold the shop up front, with sleeping quarters for the Guinns’ kids in back.
Stanley and Mary Guinn launched the business the same year they got married.
“They quit their jobs and put everything on the line to create the business. They were-hard working, they were persistent, and they got along well with people. They wanted to build something for us, and today that business supports all our families,” said their youngest son.
The Guinns would drive the 30 minutes from their home in Henry County to the shop each day, typically with their growing family packed into a wood-paneled station wagon.
“I can remember being 5 or 6 years old making boxes and stacking doughnut holes, and learning to fry doughnuts when I was 12 or 13. It’s always been an integral part of our lives,” recalled Guinn, who met his future wife while working at the shop.
“I met her when she came in one Sunday morning, and we’ve been married nearly 34 years,” he said.
Guinn still waits on many of the same customers he first met when he started working the counter as a 14-year-old kid.
“They’re a loyal bunch,” he said.
Many of his regulars “get the same doughnut, day after day, many of them on their way to work,” he said.
“We get a lot of people who come in early because they’re on their way to the airport, or are staying with a relative at the hospital, and we just happen to be the only place open at 4 a.m.,” he said.
When he wears his Sweet Shop shirt around town, “I get a ton of feedback from people,” he said. “A lot of people say, ‘I’ve been coming my whole life, and now I bring my grandkids,’ or ‘My kids are coming home from college and I’m getting them doughnuts,’” he said.
One man who lives on the east side of Indianapolis once told Guinn that his elderly mother doesn’t eat much, but when he takes her to early-morning doctor appointments, he always stops by for a Sweet Shop doughnut at her request.
A pair of women from Richmond stop in once a month to get a doughnut on their way to go shopping and to doctor appointments.
Many parents bring their kids in for doughnuts as a tradition on the first day of school, and older customers come in to reminisce about their days visiting the shop back when it was a drive-in restaurant called Crider’s back in the 1950s and ’60s.
Others say they’re families have been stopping in for Sweet Shop doughnuts for Easter, Christmas and other special occasions for years.
“All those stories are really neat. They make you feel connected to people and their everyday lives,” said Guinn, who is proud that his family’s doughnut shop is a part of the small-town fabric of Greenfield.
“Greenfield still has that small-town feel, and people hold on to those memories of their parents bringing them here when they were kids,” he said.
A few women who made regular stops at the Sweet Shop as kids have ordered doughnuts to be served at their weddings.
“At first I didn’t realize what a big deal this 50-year milestone was, but it’s things like that that make you realize what an intricate part of people’s lives our shop has been,” Guinn said.
“We’re getting people who have just heard about us who have just moved to town, said ‘We’ll have to check this place out,’” Giunn said. “When our regulars overhear them saying that, they’ll say ‘Welcome to Greenfield.’ You get that small-town feel here,” he said.
White counts herself among the many regulars who are happy to stop by the modest little doughnut shop each day.
Last week, she met up with fellow regulars Judy Willits of Greenfield and Phil and Jan Ramsey of Wilkinson, who stop by every Wednesday and Saturday morning to enjoy a couple of doughnuts and catch up with friends.
JOIN THE CELEBRATION
The Sweet Shop is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week by giving away prizes to customers through Sunday, Nov. 7.
The shop, 1309 W. Main St., is open from 4 a.m. to noon, or until the doughnuts sell out.
