Cops & Doughnuts to revive downtown South Bend bakery

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) - Customers and employees of Dainty Maid Bake Shop in downtown South Bend received devastating news in February. Owner David Hab had died, and at the time it seemed the beloved bakery would be lost with him.

But thanks to a group of cops from Clare, Mich., Dainty Maid now has a future and its 88-year history will live on.

It's what the officers, owners of the Cops & Doughnuts bakery and now Dainty Maid, specialize in. Saving towns' beloved bakeries and keeping their traditions alive.

Last weekend, it was announced that Cops & Doughnuts had purchased the bakery. The new owners hope to open in middle to late August.

"We are thrilled and blessed," says Bonnie Daker, vice president of Dainty Maid. "It's going to be great for South Bend."

Although Dainty Maid's new owners aren't local, fans of the bakery will be happy to know many parts of the business will remain. The store will be called the Cops & Doughnuts Dainty Maid Precinct. All the bakeries the business takes over are given a precinct title from the original name of the business.

This will be Cops & Doughnuts' fourth store, but there are other new locations in the works, says Alan White, the bakery's vice president. White is more commonly known as Bubba to customers and his fellow officers. All the founding officers go by their nicknames.

Bubba says they have about 20 signature doughnuts, but South Bend residents can expect to see some Dainty Maid favorites on the menu as well. All of Dainty Maid's recipes are included in the sale, and Bubba say they will be looking for customer feedback in terms of what items people want to see.

Dainty Maid's head baker will also work with Cops & Doughnuts, Daker says, because many of the recipes are in his head. Bubba says they will have about 30 jobs, and they are hoping to have as many Dainty Maid employees return as they can get.

It's important for the owners of Cops & Doughnuts to keep local history intact. After all, it was Dainty Maid's history that attracted Cops & Doughnuts in the first place, and keeping a bakery alive is their motivation.

The company got its start with a local doughnut shop and bakery in Clare. The bakery was in constant operation since 1896, but in 2009, it was on the verge of closing. So the officers of the small-town police department banded together, using their own money, and bought the bakery.

The goal at the time was to just break even and keep the business open, Bubba says.

In Clare's three-block downtown, there were 11 empty storefronts, and they didn't want the bakery to be number 12.

"We hated seeing what was happening to our little town," he says.

They weren't expecting what came next, though. News of Cops & Doughnuts spread, and more and more customers started coming. Now the bakery has expanded into two adjacent buildings in Clare, and the once empty downtown has seen full storefronts for the last two years, Bubba says.

Cops & Doughnuts reached the point where it could no longer expand in Clare, though, so the group decided to spread what they accomplished in their town to other communities. So Bubba says all he did was search online for bakeries closing and found the news about Dainty Maid.

After visiting South Bend and talking with people on the downtown streets, he says, it was clear Dainty Maid was exactly what they were looking for.

"It didn't take long to figure out how beloved it was," he says. "It was the perfect story."

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Source: South Bend Tribune, http://bit.ly/1X7zOCB

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Information from: South Bend Tribune, http://www.southbendtribune.com