Miami has The Salty Donut, Chicago has Stan’s, Portland has Voodoo Doughnut (although I like Blue Star better) and New York City has a ton of doughnut shops, but my personal favorite is the Doughnut Plant. But where is St. Pete’s downtown doughnut shop?

Celine Duvoisin, owner of Valhalla Bakery in the Grand Central District, and Steven Brinkman noticed a hole in the doughnut market too. “Ever since Valhalla Bakery opened at the end of 2018, we’ve had such an outpouring of support from the St. Pete community,” says Duvoisin. “And by far our most asked question is ‘When will you have doughnuts?’”

For National Doughnut Day on June 5th, Valhalla Bakery made a special batch of 500 doughnuts. When the doors opened in the morning, there was a line down the street and they were completely sold out in less than an hour.

Imagine having a dream of owning your own business. For years, decades even, you throw ideas around in your head of what your future venture might look like. Until one day, you conjure up the perfect concept. And you finally decide to take a leap of faith and make your dream a reality.

So you spend months upon months sketching out a business plan, deciding on a clever name, employing a branding company, finding an excellent location, hiring the right staff, etc. You get the picture. And then weeks before your grand opening, a pandemic brings the world to its knees and life as we know it shuts down.

This is essentially what the past few months has been like for Jordan Johnson, owner of Naked Farmer, a new farm-fresh restaurant located at 200 Central Avenue, which was scheduled to open to the public on April 1st in Downtown St. Pete.