‘Everybody’s got to eat’: York County donut shop to open for South Carolina’s sugar fix

York County has yet another new donut shop, this one in a new area.

The Greater Clover Chamber of Commerce will host a grand opening and ribbon cutting event Monday for Clover Donuts. The Jan. 31 event starts at 11:30 a.m. The new shop is at 301 S. Main St., between Walnut and Catawba streets. It’s in a former auto parts building, across Walnut from the former American Thread mill.

Ann Skar, president of the Greater Clover Chamber of Commerce, said the owners plan a soft opening ahead of the celebration on Monday. They’ve worked hard, Skar said, to renovate the former Clover Auto Supply building that hasn’t had business in it for some time.

“COVID just kind of took away a year of every of everybody’s life,” Skar said. “I’m thinking it’s been vacant since maybe early 2020.”

Like the former mill beside it, the once auto parts property was in need of renovation. The town has done work in recent years to prep the mill for possible redevelopment. Not far, in downtown Clover, there have been new shop openings even as the COVID-19 pandemic challenges many businesses.

“We’ve got several new shops on Main Street,” Skar said. “We’ve got three or four that opened during COVID. These are all locally owned and operated shops.”

The Clover event Monday comes just two days after the grand opening of Duck Donuts in Fort Mill. That shop in Brayden Village Shopping Center will expand the Charlotte market for a company that began in North Carolina. Duck Donuts has giveaways planned for its Jan. 29 opening.

Both openings highlight an apparent sweet tooth in York County. In November, The Herald ran its Battle of the Sweet Treats bracket to let online readers pick their favorite donut and cake shops. The 16-shop bracket collected almost 135,000 votes in four rounds.

Several of the donut shops in contention — Duck and the Rock Hill trio of MoMo Donuts, Rainbow Donuts and Rise and Shine Doughnut Cafe — are new locations just since last year. The closest bracket entries to the new Clover Donuts were Windy Hill Orchard in York and a cake shop, eventual winner Fast Frog Bakery in Lake Wylie.

Pandemic or no pandemic, Skar believes she knows why sweet shop openings have been so plentiful of late. It’s as much common sense as business sense.

“Think about it,” Skar said. “Everybody’s got to eat. And when you say hot donuts, it makes everybody’s ears perk up, I don’t care how good you’ve been before that. You say you’re opening a donut shop, people are going to be there.”