Decades of serving what customers want

You can't miss the hot pink and orange sign on Northwest Highway in Palatine. It beckons you in like a good doughnut shop should.

Spunky Dunkers epitomizes a good doughnut shop: it's independently owned, bakers make doughnuts by hand and the place is beloved by the community.

Owner Suzette Campbell has been rolling out doughnuts at the shop for 39 years. She and her two partners, sisters Jan and Sherree Daczewitz, began working there as teenagers when the tiny place was a Mister Donut. In 1987 they bought the business and, in 1997, they went independent enabling the trio to tailor the business to the wants and needs of their customers.

One important decision they made was to keep the sit-down counter space. "We have customers that come in seven days a week," Campbell says, "we want to provide a warm feeling of community. We've gotten to know generations of families."

Spunky Dunkers is also looking for just the right taste and quality to provide customers.

"We use a flour mix that makes a consistent dough and doesn't absorb a lot of oil," she explains, "and we cut out all doughnuts by hand and fry them fresh twice daily."

What's the most popular type of doughnut? Campbell believes it's evenly split between yeast and cake, glazed and anything with chocolate on it.

Got a craving now? Spunky Dunkers is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day, luring in doughnut devotees for a moment of soul-satisfying pleasure.

-- Lisa Ackleson