Preface To Palaces: The Donut Palace Mystery

That is a picture I took somewhere in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex millions of years ago. Okay, it was August of 2017, probably in Fort Worth, but it appears I took the picture on my way back from Dallas, so who knows.

Here's the thing: I know for a fact there's a Donut Palace here in Portland, Oregon. So I thought to myself, "How many businesses called Donut Palace can there be?" Donut places mostly seem self-owned - little business run by families. Can the interwebs help me?

This website informs me: "There are 289 Donut Palace locations in United States as of March, 2026. The highest number of Donut Palace locations of United States are in Texas & Oklahoma with 168 businesses & 25 businesses, respectively. Texas makes up approximately 58.1% of all Donut Palace locations in the United States."

This website - which is for the Donut Palace & Equipment Co. tells me: "Donut Palace & Equipment Company, Inc., a Texas C Corporation*, is owned & operated by Mr. Alton Blair, it’s [sic] president. Mr. Blair has been in the business of constructing, operating, & equipping, sub-leasing, & supplying bakery ingredients (i.e. sugar, shortening, flour, etc.) to donut stores for more than 40 years. Beginning in 1967 & continuing to 1979, Mr. Blair started 140 independent donut stores. He initiated the Donut Palace name brand in 1979. Since then Mr. Blair has started over 450 Donut Palace stores scattered throughout communities located in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma & many other places."

There's a bunch of photos of Donut Palaces here - they seem to have a regular sign, which does not resemble the one above - & that sign is not on display as one of the businesses in the photos.

As far as I can tell, Donut Palace isn't quite a franchise - but perhaps to use the name you need to have a relationship with the Texas company. I can't quite figure out how that would work tho.

Here is a picture of the one in Oregon:

Again, no clue if it's related to the Texas company or not. I'm not that good of a detective. I can tell you that they have vegan donuts on Saturdays, & the wife would go get them during the pandemic. It's about a forty-five minute drive round trip, so she eventually decided it wasn't entirely worth it. But they were good!

Any insight into this Donut Palace mystery? I could use your better understanding of the economics of franchising!

* Defined by this website, "A C-corporation (C-corp) is a legal business entity that provides its owners – commonly known as shareholders – with limited liability protection. This entity type is separately from its owners. A corporation itself is taxed on its profits, & shareholders are taxed again when they receive dividends – not as a general matter of course on their personal tax returns, as is the case with most partnerships & LLCs."