The sweetest part of living in Rochester might be its donut shops. Three local favorites draw on rich culinary histories and family wisdom and maintain strong relationships with their customers. These crowd-pleasing, locally owned businesses continue to make us happy with both classic and innovative products. If you’re stopping by to get treats for the office—or for any reason at all—you can’t go wrong with these family-run hot spots.
Dell’s Sweets and Treats
“Rochester is a foodie town,” says Bill Dell, owner of Dell’s Sweets and Treats at 610 North Greece Road. He loves the wide variety of quality restaurants in the area. “If you can’t go out and find something, it’s your own fault,” he laughs.
Dell was born and raised in Rochester. He also operates Dell’s Market and Deli at 1799 English Road and is happy to run small family businesses in Greece. He comes from a line of bakers; his great-grandfather opened Lipani’s Bakery in Rochester in 1902 after immigrating from Sicily. The family operated that business for more than ninety years. Dell also worked at Wegman’s for thirty years and says the experience was important in his development as a baker. “I have Wegman’s DNA inside me.”
Dell’s caters events and offers “donut walls,” donut bouquets, and decorate-your-own-donut kits for kids. The bakery also works with many schools and sports teams to create custom donuts. In addition to the donuts, which won a Rochester Community Choice (Gannett) award in 2024, Dell’s makes cakes, cannoli, cookies, cupcakes, ice cream, and a variety of seasonal treats.
In this small bakery, the focus is on quality. Six employees make donuts and cannoli to order throughout the day, and a few other team members are cross-trained in both the bakery and the deli to allow for flexibility. If you walk into the bakery at five in the afternoon and order two dozen donuts, Dell says, they will be made fresh. “Nothing is better than a freshly made cannoli or donut.” The shop makes its donuts from scratch in small batches, offering a wide variety of flavors, including chopped peanut, lemon-filled, and maple bacon.
Donuts Delite
Nick Semeraro’s friends like to call him Nicky Donuts. But when he was younger, he says, he didn’t even like donuts because he didn’t realize how good they could be.
As a graduate of the School of the Arts in Rochester who went on to study art and engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology, Semeraro brings innovation and artistry to his work. “Donuts are a canvas,” he says. He likes to “break the box” with fresh ideas as well as collaborations with other local entrepreneurs. He points to a collaboration with the Genesee Brewery last year: a honey bun infused with Genesee Keg Tree Cream Ale and topped with a Genesee Keg Tree Ale cinnamon icing. And the cannoli donut, he says, “was invented right here.”
Donuts Delite shares its historic building at 1700 Culver Road with Salvatore’s Pizza. The donut shop first opened at this location in 1958. Semeraro started working on the pizza side of the business but became the owner/operator of the donut shop in 2016. He credits his staff, his wife and sons who work alongside him, and God for some of the marvelous successes that the business has racked up. During the early days of the pandemic, he prayed for guidance. When the shop happened upon the idea of a donut decorated with an edible picture of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s face, the result was nothing less than miraculous. The Fauci donut quickly went viral and was picked up by media outlets around the world. “I got calls from Italy and California,” he says, adding that it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time, “by the grace of God.”
Semeraro strives to make Donuts Delite a warm and supportive place to work, saying it’s like “one big family.” Many employees are young people, and he tries to foster a positive culture and give people great starts to their working lives. He enjoys working with nonprofits and schools to create fundraisers.
Semeraro relishes the opportunity to work hard in a business housed in a local landmark. He says two customers have come in every day since the shop opened in 1958, a loyalty he considers a real honor. “That’s what it’s about.”
Ridge Donut Cafe
“I’m not someone who could sit behind a desk,” says Jackie Marcello, manager of Ridge Donut Cafe, located since 1996 at 1600 Portland Avenue in Irondequoit. She is the granddaughter of the original owners, who opened the shop’s first location on Ridge Road in 1977. Marcello loves working with her hands, and these days she does plenty of it. There is more work behind running the business than people realize, she says, and “a lot of moving parts.” In the last ten years, social media attention has helped business double. To keep up with demand, staff work on the premises twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with both morning and night baking shifts. The shop also caters special events. “It’s really cool to carry on the legacy of my grandparents and something that they created and worked really, really, really hard for,” Marcello says.
Over the years, the cafe’s apple fritters have become famous, and customers especially love its classic glazed, cinnamon roll, Bavarian cream, white cream, sour cream, and chocolate-dipped donuts. The cafe also offers breakfast and lunch, including sandwiches and soups.
Despite challenges with staffing and the increasing cost of ingredients like eggs, flour, and sugar, Marcello deeply values being able to deliver the quality that people expect while maintaining a cheerful atmosphere at the cafe. The place is “intimate,” she says, and eating there is a longstanding tradition for many families. Ridge strives to retain staff so that customers see the same faces when they come in and can build relationships over time.
Marcello points to a sign hanging on the wall: “Where families bring in families for life.” Those relationships are incredibly rewarding, she says. “There are people who sit at this counter who have been sitting at this counter for thirty years.”
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2026 issue of (585).
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