Kathleen Lavey

Lansing State Journal

CLARE – The story of Cops & Doughnuts Bakery in Clare is fast becoming deep-fried, delicious Michigan folklore.

In 2009, the Clare City Bakery was about to go out of business, leaving another empty storefront in a city already hit hard by the recession. The nine full-time officers of the Clare Police Department decided they couldn’t let the bakery’s 113-year history end.

Each kicked in $1,500 to keep it afloat. They renamed it Cops & Doughnuts and gave it a badge-shaped sign ringed by a pink-frosted doughnut.

The bakery had one part-time employee, recalled Greg “Ryno” Rynearson, Cops & Doughnuts president. “We said, maybe we’ll get to five or six."

Now, Cops & Doughnuts employs 60 workers in Clare and is buying bakeries in other cities as well.

“We’ve become that place where, when you’re on your way somewhere, you need to stop,” said Cops & Doughnuts vice-president Al “Bubba” White (yes, each of the nine original cop-investors has a nickname). “We just wanted to save this old bakery in Clare. That’s all we wanted to do. It just blossomed from there.”

More than 500,000 people visited the bakery in 2015, and it sold an all-time high 1,200 dozen of its signature raised doughnut products on Sept. 5, the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. That’s more than 14,000 chunks of glazed goodness.

The business now takes up three storefronts. You can order a coffee and a Misdemeanor Wiener at the Traffic Stop diner or shop for a “Don’t Glaze Me, Bro” T-shirt in The Cop Shop.

On Sunday, “Cops & Doughnuts, McDonald’s Precinct” opens in Ludington, in the former McDonald’s Bakery. The cops plan to open another “precinct” in the former Sutherland’s Bakery in Bay City by the Fourth of July.

“We can’t wait to be part of Ludington, to be part of the community there,” White said. “It was in the same family for five generations. It was a situation where they didn’t want to go on with it anymore, so we’re going to carry on that McDonald’s family tradition.”

Cops & Doughnuts also operates a “precinct” inside Jay’s Sporting Goods in Gaylord and delivers baked goods to about 50 other locations in northern Michigan. A deal is in the works for a bakery in Indiana, as well.

Both Rynearson and White took early retirements from the police department in 2013 to focus full-time on the bakery. They’ve also hired a business manager – whom they call “The Suit” – to help with the day-to-day work of expansion. They expect to sell Cops & Doughnuts franchises in the near future.

Their formula for success is simple: Made-from-scratch baked goods, reasonable prices, and a heaping helping of fun.

The cops are smart marketers, said Robert Kolt, who owns a Lansing public relations firm and teaches advertising and public relations at Michigan State University.

“Some people would run away from stereotypes, and they’ve embraced it. It makes cops likable,” he said.

But he said the product also is important.

“You’ve got to have good doughnuts to sell doughnuts,” he said.

Raised yeast doughnuts are the bakery’s specialty and the vast majority of its business. Layer on cop kitsch with the Bacon Squealer, an unfilled long john topped with maple frosting and two strips of crispy bacon.

The biggest seller is a classic chocolate-frosted, custard-filled long john that doesn’t have a fancy cop-inspired name.

“We just call it ‘good,’” White said.

Doughnuts are $13.99 for a baker’s dozen (13 doughnuts). You can also buy individual doughnuts, Amish-style hand pies and gigantic cookies, all made from scratch and baked in the kitchen behind the bakery. The humor carries into the kitchen: A walk-in cooler is labeled “City Morgue.”

White refers to The Cop Shop as “our area of shameless capitalism.” You can buy a Cops & Dougnuts patch to sew onto a jacket, a Cops & Doughnuts mug, or T-shirts and sweatshirts with slogans such as “DWI: Doughnuts were Involved.” Get your picture behind a barred door labeled “Cops & Doughnuts jail” or look at police patches that adorn the walls, brought in by visitors from around the world.

You can buy bags of Cops & Doughnuts signature coffee and Michigan-made products, including honey, syrup and baskets handmade by an Amish family that lives near Clare.

“We’re big on Michigan, we’re big on community,” White said. They look for local sourcing first, then Michigan sourcing for ingredients and products. Coffee, for example, is roasted and packaged by Lansing’s Paramount Coffee.

Like the doughnuts, much of the merchandise is named with puns that riff on police work. The regular coffee roast is called “Morning Shift,” while the dark roast is “Midnight Shift.” Decaf? That’s labeled “Off-Duty.” A travel mug is emblazoned with the Cops & Doughnuts logo on one side and “Don’t dunk and drive” on the other. There’s even Cops & Doughnuts cologne, labeled “Under Suspicion” for men and “Probable Cause” for women.

Rynearson and White think up the ideas for new merchandise as well as food products, with an occasional assist from the others.

“They reinvent themselves constantly,” said city manager Ken Hibl. “If something works, it’s ‘Great, let’s go next phase.’ And if something doesn’t work, they hang it up and go on to whatever else they think will work.”

You can hire a cop to share the bakery's story for a business event. Rynearson also does talks advising other business owners on promoting themselves, a session labeled "Social Media SWAT."

Promoting Clare’s downtown has always been a goal, Rynearson said. That’s why there’s no address on their billboards on U.S. 127. They want visitors to take a look around town before stopping at Cops & Doughnuts.

“The biggest promoter of new businesses in town is Cops & Doughnuts,” Hibl said.

One example: When a new business opened nearby, bakery staff drew chalk arrows on the sidewalk pointing toward the new business and suggesting that others visit.

Hibl said the bakery is known for helping out in the community.

“There are so many stories that they won’t share with anybody,” he said. “Families, businesses in need, they just reach out and help.”

Officers who are still on the force often stop by Cops & Doughnuts, with the city’s blessing.

“It keeps us hopping,” said Brian “Dogman" Gregory, an original investor who has since been promoted to police chief. (Former chief Dwayne “Midge” Miedzianowski is now Clare County’s undersheriff). “People want to take our pictures with their kids.”

Contact Kathleen Lavey at 377-1251 or klavey@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @kathleenlavey.

If you go

Cops & Doughnuts is at 521 N. McEwan St., Clare

It's open 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily; the Traffic Stop diner is open 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Check out the web site at www.copsdoughnuts.com.