Even the chilly conditions didn’t stop Tiya Morton from waiting two and a half hours to get a Hurts Donut on Jan. 16 at the Montgomery City VFW Post 4436 building. 

At 10:30 a.m., the Montgomery City resident was the first person to grab some items from the popular Springfield-based business. She purchased two dozen donuts and a cookie.

“I heard that they’re really good and they look really good,” Morton said. “It’s my daughter’s first donut, so I’m like, ‘Why not go all out?’”

Hurts Donut sold donuts and cookies for two hours before they were sold out at 12:30 p.m. More than 70 people stood in line before the Hurts Donut event started at 10:30 a.m. The numbers grew from there. 

“We usually have a big line right at the beginning,” said Jordan Kalesnick, who was one of three staff members who worked at the event. We don’t always sell out this fast. Sometimes we’re standing here for a couple of hours waiting for people to show up and buy the last of our stuff. So this was a really quick turnaround for us today.”

Hurts Donut, which was founded in 2013, has 18 locations across the country, including locations in Springfield and Branson. Morton, who graduated from Montgomery County High School five years ago, said she first heard about Hurts Donut from one of her friends.

“She sent me pictures and talked about it a lot,” Morton said. “I heard they’re really good.”

During its visit in Montgomery City, Hurts Donut sold all kinds of donuts, plus huge cinnamon rolls and jumbo chocolate chip cookies.

“Collectively, the majority of our staff made them,” Kalesnick said. “I actually made some of them personally. The two girls who were with us helped decorate all of them. We just packaged them all up and we put them on the van and came down. It took us three hours to get here.”

The event was originally scheduled to start at 11 a.m., but the Hurts Donut workers decided to move it to a half-hour early.

“We got set up a little bit early,” Kalesnick said. “We figured we wouldn’t make them wait too much longer. We were ready to go and they were ready to go, so we might as well let them in.”

Plans for the Hurts Donut event at Montgomery City were made just three days before. The business decided to select VFW Post 4436 to host the event.

“They had it on Facebook,” Post 4436 Commander Kayla Gastler said. “They asked, “Hey, where can we park our van?’ I commented, “Hey, park it at the VFW.’ A lady hopped on Google Reviews to look at our business and said, ‘Can we do it inside? It’s going to be cold.’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

The donut event was a fundraiser. Half of the sales will go to the VFW and the other half will go to another business that has yet to be determined.

Kalesnick said he was amazed to see many people waiting in the cold to get donuts and cookies.

“It was a lot more than we were expecting,” he said. “A lot more than we could probably fit in our vehicle. Sadly, we sold out a little quickly for everyone, but we had such a great turnout that it was well worth coming. We definitely would want to come back again.”