We Would Like You To Meet Our Family
We would like to thank my great grandfather for developing our fantastic recipes that we are still using today to make our wonderful donuts and now the 4th generation family is going to carry out its legacy by opening Dads Mini Donuts in Kendrick, Idaho in hopes of opening many more stores in the future
From Humble Beginnings to a Beloved American Institution
In 1989 my father Fred Boykin opened his first donut shop in Aberdeen Washington, then in Yelm Washington. In 1999 he opened in Cody Wyoming, he sent scouts out to find more locations, and they found Golden Colorado.
Where he opened two stores, all were very successful. Then in 2002 he sold all the shops thinking he would retire but no. In 2018 he decided to once again open a store in Aurora Colorado.
Using the recipes handed down was a fantastic hit. Then he opened another store in Cheyenne Wyoming as the taste of our wonderful donuts got around.
He then opened a second store in Cheyenne all were doing fantastic, then covid-19 hit and all stores were lost closing all the stores in 2021.
In recent decades, Dad’s donut shops have evolved to reflect changing tastes and trends. While classic glazed and chocolate-covered donuts remain popular, many shops now offer gourmet flavors, vegan and gluten-free options, and creative toppings. Independent donut shops and boutique chains have emerged, focusing on artisanal techniques and high-quality ingredients. Dad’s Donuts have also become a canvas for culinary experimentation, with flavors ranging from maple bacon to matcha and seasonal specialties.
Donut shops have become more than places to buy pastries—they are community gathering spots, open late or even 24 hours, where people meet for coffee, conversation, and comfort food. The donut shop has been immortalized in films, television, and literature as a symbol of American life. Whether in big cities or small towns, the donut shop remains a beloved fixture, continually adapting and thriving in response to new generations of donut enthusiasts.
From their humble beginnings as fried dough treats brought over by immigrants to the bustling, innovative shops seen today, donut shops have a rich and flavorful history. Their enduring popularity is a testament to the simple pleasure of a fresh donut, and a hot cup of coffee shared among friends, family, and communities across America.
By Elizabeth Sampson For the Wyoming Tribune Eagle
CHEYENNE – Encountering a bear claw, a winter wolf and a hellcat in the same location may sound daunting, but that is exactly what’s in store for customers of Cheyenne’s new doughnut and coffee shop combination.
No need to bring the bear spray, though – a bear claw is just a doughnut, a winter wolf is a white chocolate and peppermint coffee drink, and a hellcat is four shots of espresso mixed in a cup of coffee.
Dad’s Donuts and The Boys Brew opened March 28 at 715 S. Greeley Highway and is offering these treats and many more from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.
Two businesses in one building, Dad’s Donuts, is owned by Fred and Lynn Boykin, while The Boys Brew is owned by their son, Jason Steelman, with his friend and partner, Lee Boland.
They recently moved here from Colorado and aren’t kidding when they say it’s a family business. Between Fred and Lynn Boykin, they have 15 children and 18 grandchildren, and many of them are helping out at the new business.
Children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, a sister, a son-in-law and Steelman’s wife help do everything from running the counter and making doughnuts to cleaning the restaurant and designing business graphics.
They said they hope to extend that feeling of family to their customers. Lynn Boykin said she would love to see kids coming in after school to work on their homework, community college
students stopping on their way to class or shift workers coming in when they get off work to enjoy a doughnut and a cup of coffee.
“It’s made for community,” Steelman said. “We want people to come in and enjoy the space – all kinds of different people. That’s what the coffee shop is all about – everybody coming together.”
Steelman said the coffee shop is made for gaming, with all of the specialty drinks named after gaming elements. The space includes room for all kinds of gaming – from card and board games to Dungeons and Dragons. They also offer Wi-Fi so people can play online games.
“We want people to hang out,” Steelman said.
Their location, which was formerly housed Tasty Bones Barbecue and the Tortilla Factory, has a patio space as well as a large outdoor space next to the parking lot.
They are hoping to use that area for summer festivals, a Halloween haunted house and other outdoor events.
Steelman is no stranger to coffee. He owned a coffee shop called The Witch’s Brew in Denver, and he and his partner worked with a California-based coffee bean roaster and sold their beans online for a year before opening in Cheyenne.
“Their coffee is just beyond excellent,” said Fred Boykin, “His coffee is very smooth. You don’t have that bite at the end.”
He said their doughnuts are delicious, too.
“Our doughnuts are melting in your mouth from scratch,” Fred Boykin said. “My generation will remember this is what a doughnut is supposed to taste like.”
Dad’s Donuts isn’t the first doughnut shop the family has owned. Fred Boykin is a third-generation baker and has owned several doughnut shops, including one in Cody.
They opened a Dad’s Donuts in Aurora, Colorado, in November, and their son Justin runs that location.
Lynn Boykin said making everything from scratch isn’t their only secret, but it is the main thing that makes their doughnuts stand out from other shops.
In addition to traditional raised and filled doughnuts, they make treats many other shops don’t make, like old-fashioned buttermilk doughnuts and French crullers.
Lynn Boykin said they are thinking about expanding their menu to include a few more items soon.
Customers have been asking for kolaches, and as a former resident of New Orleans, she is hoping to add beignets to the doughnut shelf, too.
One of their specialty items is a crumb doughnut, which is a glazed doughnut rolled in crumbs from other doughnuts that ended up not being perfect.
“It kind of like a Forrest Gump doughnut,” Boykin said. “You never know what you’re going to get.”
By Andi Jaspersen on Sep. 03, 2019
Dad’s Donuts –715 S. Greeley Highway, Cheyenne
Dad's Donuts North -- 501 E Pershing Blvd, Cheyenne
Dad’s Donuts is quickly becoming a new hangout in town. The baking team clearly has fun as they tout the widest selection of donuts in town: cereal-flavored, Sesame Street-themed, all the classics, and more. They have no shortage of ideas, and something is sure to strike the fancy of every member of your party. All donuts are made completely from scratch (no pre-mixed powder a’round here) and they boast a collection of board games and space to play, while you sip fresh The Boys Brew Coffee, reportedly the highest-octane coffee in Cheyenne!
Dad's Donuts & The Boys Brew opened their second location off 501 E. Pershing Blvd. The business has been in Cheyenne off South Greeley Hwy for nearly a year. The owners, Fred and Lynn Boykin, decided to expand the business to E Pershing Blvd because they felt it's a good location for business and to make travel easier for customers.
"It's just the right location between downtown and midtown and dell range, we're close to everything," Lynn Boykin said.
According to Barista Matthew “Ichi” Ichiyasu, the new store sold more donuts than the original store in just the second day of the opening.
"We don't just want to have a store, we want to be part of this town, part of this city,” Ichiyasu said. “We want to be a place where people can come, enjoy themselves, and be part of this great place that we live."
Dad's Donuts, featuring The Boys Brew, just opened its second Cheyenne location on March 4th, 2020. The new shop is located at 501 E. Pershing Blvd. in the building anchored by Domino's Pizza.
Dad's Donuts is owned by Fred and Lynn Boykin.
Fred is a third-generation baker, and most of the donut recipes come from Fred's great grandfather.
All of the donuts are made from scratch at their two backing lines at the South Greely Highway location.
Lynn said, "our dough is really special, all handcrafted varieties including cake, buttermilk, old fashioned, cruller and raised."
According to Boykin the most popular donuts are their raised glazed donut, and the fanciest is the giant bear claw.
The Boykins decided to open a second location in Cheyenne to help meet customer demand.
"There really isn't a bakery and donut shop for this part of town. Our customers kept asking us for a location in this area," said Lynn.
Dad's Donuts also features The Boys Brew, which makes gourmet coffee from custom-roasted coffee beans. They offer a large variety of popular and unique coffee blends.
Regardless of where you are in town, you will be able to get your donuts!
Both locations are open daily.
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By Kathryn Palmer, Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Apr 3, 2020
CHEYENNE – Dad’s Donuts and The Boys Brew had just opened its second location on Pershing Boulevard last month when fear of spreading COVID-19 shut it down, along with most of the restaurants in the city.
“It was pretty devastating. We’ve just been holding on,” said Heather Steelman, who co-owns the coffee business with her husband, Jason, and his parents. The coffee shop, whose original location on South Greeley Highway opened one year ago earlier this week, operates in tandem with the doughnut shop, which other members of the Steelman family run.
Starting this morning, from 6-11 a.m., both doughnut and coffee service will be available every day for delivery or pickup at the Dad’s Donuts and The Boys Brew location at 715 S. Greeley Highway. Customers can order in person in their cars or online. The Pershing location doesn’t have adequate parking for pickup and will not be open.
It’s not the setup the Steelman’s and the rest of their family envisioned for the business when they opened last year. But “we decided we needed to figure out something,” Heather Steelman said.
Troubleshooting alternatives amid the sudden economic crises created by a global pandemic is something countless businesses have had to do over the past month.
The doughnut business had been steady for the family-owned sweet shop until COVID-19 pushed public health officials to set social distancing guidelines. Those warn against spreading the virus via large public gatherings.
Dad’s Donuts and The Boys Brew took the warning seriously and closed. But the lure of sugar and caffeine are powerful.
Customers bombarded the family of coffee-roasters and bakers with hundreds of questions a day about when the business would start offering pickup and delivery services – like so many other restaurants in Cheyenne have already.
One of Jason Steelman’s initial concerns was having enough employees at one time to remain compliant with the standards state health officials have released and stay open full-time.
“The baker cannot touch anything in the front. The cashier cannot touch any of the doughnuts. The person making the coffee can’t touch the register,” he explained. “There are so many things you can’t cross-contaminate that to do it right, you would need about three people per station.”
Earlier this week, the doughnut and coffee crew, which employs about eight or nine total staff, had a trial-run on the delivery operation it plans to get fully underway this morning.
“Dad called us in for a meeting,” said Steelman, whose father, Fred Boykin, is the namesake of Dad’s Donuts. “We weren’t open for safety reasons. But he wanted to do something for the first responders. He’s been worried about them during this whole situation.”
Monday night, the doughnut shop’s three bakers worked without pay for several hours to make 200 dozen doughnuts – a mixture of glazed and cake. That’s 2,400 doughnuts that the business dropped off – along with nine gallons of fresh coffee – at local police stations, fire stations, Cheyenne Regional Medical Center and the Cheyenne Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
“After we were able to do that safely, we talked about how we can reopen safely,” Jason Steelman said. “The way we have it set up now, there will be no cross-contamination. We’re shortening our hours to make it work. ... That way, we’re able to split up shifts, and people can have days off.”
Steelman said they’ve applied for some small business grants and other emergency funds to fill in for lost business during the pandemic. But while they wait for answers, Steelman said each employee – all of whom are family members – will receive pay on an as-needed basis, but that “everyone will be taken care of.”
Thursday afternoon and evening, the crew was back to some of their familiar preparations for a morning of selling doughnuts and coffee, like stocking milk and mixing doughnut batter.
Jason Steelman, who’s excited to return to his passion of coffee-crafting, said cleanliness is their top priority.
“We just want to get people the coffee and doughnuts they want,” he said. “But we wanted to make sure Cheyenne was safe first before we did this.”
Published: March 1, 2021
In what has been a sad side effect of the 2020 Covid:19 Pandemic, that still seems to steep into 2021, another great staple of Cheyenne has been forced to shut its doors. In a Facebook post on February 21st, Dad's Donuts announced that they would be closing their shop. It is with very sad and heavy hearts that we have had to close Dads Donuts. We truly enjoyed meeting all of our wonderful customers and miss you all. Cheyenne welcomed us with open arms, we couldn't have asked for a better community.
With Three locations, one at 715 South Greeley Highway and another location at 501 East Pershing Blvd, both in Cheyenne. The Pershing location had opened just last March, before what feels like everything unraveled in the world. A third location at 14440 E 6th Ave, Aurora, CO
The Donut shop posted on Facebook a few times over the past months with signs of struggle. It's just a painful reminder of what small businesses have had to deal with over the past year now. Even as it feels like we've turned the tide in the damage, it still hurts to see this happen. Let's hope for a Grandpa's Downtown Donut Shop revival, to bring back one of Cheyenne's favorite donut shops.