Longmont’s newest donut shop Landline Doughnuts & Coffee is enclosed in nostalgia. Vintage decor and the bakery’s 1930s donut recipe using mashed potatoes pay homage to a time long past.
Owners Jodi and John Mowery plan on opening the coffee and donut shop at 321 Main Street on an unannounced date this month. The shop will have coffee and indoor seating, but the star of the business is their potato donuts, where one-third of the flour is replaced with mashed potatoes.
The couple, who are based in Broomfield, have operated Landline Doughnuts as a cottage kitchen business, baking in a residential kitchen to sell to the public, for three years. They’ve brought their potato-based baked goods to different pop-ups and markets around Colorado. The Mowerys are excited to plant roots on Longmont’s Main Street, and plan on moving into the top floor of the building.
“We are really looking forward to being a part of the Longmont community and kind of being a space where people can come together and celebrate birthdays. And we're going to have late hours on Fridays and Saturdays so people have something to do and a place to go to grab a treat and hang out, and we're really just trying to make it a multi-generational space,” Jodi said.
The potato donuts are based on a 1930s recipe, but adjusted for high-altitude baking and modern taste, Jodi said. It comes in the shop’s signature flavor, brown-butter glaze, chocolate glaze, cinnamon sugar and a rotation of flavors based on seasonal fruit. Some fruit donuts that Landline offers are its strawberry rhubarb pie and donuts with Palisade peaches.
John Mowery said the donuts aren’t gluten free since flour is only partially substituted with potatoes. Jodi Mowery, who is a self-taught baker, was experimenting with different donuts before settling on the Depression-era recipe for its unique texture. Jodi Mowery got her love for baking from a young age, making treats in the kitchen with her sister.
“It's a really tender donut,” John Mowery said. “So it's not your big fluffy donut but it's not real dense. It's kind of in-between that. The potatoes give a really good texture and they stay fresh longer and just have a really delicate mouthfeel.”
He added that paired with their glaze, the exterior of the donuts have a crunchy bite.
As a nod to the recipe’s history, the Mowerys wanted to name their business after something that evoked nostalgia. Landline Doughnuts’ reference to landline telephones which are becoming obsolete with modern cell phones.
The donut shop is decorated with vintage phones the Mowerys have found antiquing. Old knick-knacks and furniture from various eras turn the shop into a time capsule without a defined place or time.
“This is a donut your grandma might have made. And at our farmers markets, we had old phones set up like ... your grandma would have had,” Jodi Mowery said. “People really have an affinity for what they remember from their childhood and they love talking about donuts, what they did with their parents and grandparents and they love talking about phones. And we love to hear people's stories.”
Landline Doughnuts builds on a homey feel. As it transitions from a cottage kitchen business into an established shop in downtown Longmont, it strives to keep the homemade feel by pulling back the curtains.
The baking station is separated by a glass window so customers can see the process of peeling potatoes to the final product of a donut. They are installing a large pink mixer and want their customers to help pick a name for their key machinery.
As customers wait for the storefront to open on Main Street, Landline Doughnut posts its progress on social media.
