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Plaza Donuts Delights Patrons' Taste BudsNo one makes creme sticks like the Froomkins, loyal customers insist.Don't even pretend they're any kind of health food. They're not. They're loaded with sugar and fats and calories -- in many cases they're fried -- not remotely low-carb. But they taste so good.Sometimes, you just want a doughnut. And that's what drives customers through the doors of Plaza Donuts' five locations, 45 years after the first store opened in Akron.Michael Froomkin, president of the company and son of co-founder Berkeley Froomkin, acknowledges that health concerns have hurt business over the years but he can't say how much."People still like doughnuts," he observes. "Doughnuts are still a staple breakfast item."Plaza Donuts, founded by brothers Irv and Berkeley Froomkin, who operated three Youngstown coal yards, opened its first store in Akron. Two years later Plaza opened its second store in Sharon, Pa., and 1963, the company opened its store in Liberty -- still operating today and where its business offices are located. Of the first three stores, it's the only one still operating. The other four are in Boardman, Girard, Niles and downtown Youngstown; all are supplied from the Liberty bakery.The business remains a family affair. Irv's sons, Craig and Howard, serve as vice president and secretary-treasurer, respectively. From time to time, both founders come in to help out, Froomkin says."We started real young," Froomkin recalls. He and his cousins helped out while still in high school, learning how to bake the doughnuts and work the counter serving coffee and the pastries. "We've learned every little aspect," he continues. "Now basically we just manage all the stores from our office and do all the paperwork." Every day, the chain offers 25 to 30 of the 54 varieties it boasts on its signs; Froomkin declines to say how many doughnuts are produced each day. The most popular, he says, is the creme stick, followed by glazed."People tell us when they move, or if they go out of town, they try to find doughnuts and they can't find our type of creme stick," he relates. "Usually the creme sticks in the other cities are filled with Bavarian creme or custard, but ours is a very light, fluffy creme we make ourselves with our own formula." Doughnuts are made in the evening, employees at the five locations usually reporting around 4 a.m. to start brewing coffee and arranging the doughnuts for when their stores open at 5.Trucks deliver the doughnuts to the other four Plaza locations as well as wholesale accounts, which include area hospitals, service stations and convenience stores. Plaza Donuts has serviced outside wholesale accounts almost from the chain's start, Froomkin says, and the accounts have consistently represented about half of its business.Often, employees arrive for work only to see customers waiting for them. Many are regulars who come in every day and sit at the counter, Froomkin says, a setting he compares to the bar in the hit television series Cheers. The regulars, he says, talk about pretty much everything, including politics. "Sometimes it gets real loud in here," he observes. On a recent morning just after 7, some 10 customers sat before the counters in the Liberty store, a mix of patrons on their way to work and retirees who hang out."Two times a day I come in here and have my coffee," says retiree Arnold Lackey of Girard. Lackey, a regular for 20 years, says whenever he wants a cup of coffee, he usually stops at a Plaza Donuts. "Once in a while I'll have a doughnut," he remarks.Don Henry of Liberty, seated with his fellow Liberty Steel retiree Larry Green and Lackey, says he has always come to the store "but not to come in here and sit because I just retired." Green, who went to school on the South Side with Lackey, works part-time at the Union Square Sparkle. The retirees often play the online games at the store's Ohio Lottery terminal. Conversations at the counter cover a wide range of topics, including events in the news as well "people like you -- trying to figure out who you are," one patron informs a reporter amid laughter from others."Our customers are wonderful," says Judy Bresko of Youngstown, who has worked for Plaza Donuts seven years. "Pretty much everyone is here every day. We have some customers that are here on every person's shift every day. We have some senior citizens that are retired and they just enjoy coming up and having their coffee with us."Then there are the folks who just stop by on the way to somewhere else, usually work. Diane Fuller, who works at Belmont Eye Clinic just down the road, says she comes in once a week to pick up doughnuts for her patients with cataracts. "They seem to enjoy it," she says.Plaza Donuts has faced increased competition over the years, Froomkin acknowledges, from in-store bakeries that offer doughnuts and national competitors such as Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme as well as fast-food restaurants that offer breakfast items. The key in keeping Plaza's customers, he says, lies in providing an excellent product. "People who aren't very picky, or if they want a different type of taste, will go to another type of doughnut shop," he explains. "But we use the best ingredients and our secret formulas, and we keep the product very good. We make them fresh every day so that always helps."Plaza Donuts has altered its products somewhat over the years, recently adding toast and several varieties of bagels. One of the chain's mainstays, however, has been a gimmick it has used from the start -- a red star on the receipt that earns the patron a free dozen doughnuts.Plaza Donuts places special orders for register rolls on which the stars come printed. Each roll has a dozen or so red stars."Customers actually look for it and they tease the waitresses, 'When's the star coming up?' They all fight for it," he says. "Sometimes there's a contest: who can keep it the longest without using it? It's a nice little gimmick.""