OH Donut Closes Downtown Youngstown Location

YOUNGSTOWN – Citing a continued downturn in business that started during the pandemic, OH Donut has closed its downtown location.

Owners Bergen Giordani and her daughter, Morgen Chretien, opened the shop in the Erie Terminal Building in 2013 as One Hot Cookie. At the time, it was part of downtown’s renewal efforts and a sign of optimism in the area.

The shop at 112 W. Commerce St. was closed during the first half of the pandemic. When it reopened in 2021, the owners changed it to their other brand, OH Donut.

One Hot Cookie sells uniquely decorated cookies, largely for shipping, while OH Donut offers coffee, donuts and breakfast and brunch foods.

Giordani and Chretien will continue to operate their One Hot Cookie shop at 1315 Boardman Canfield Road, Boardman, and its adjacent OH Donut shop.

Later this summer, they will open a new OH Donut location at 101 S. Main St. in the center of Poland Village. They are shooting for an August open opening, Giordani said.

The downtown OH Donut location was the starting point for the owners’ foray into business, and the decision to close it was difficult for them. The owner said it holds plenty of memories for her and they held off on closing it as long as they could in hopes of a turnaround.

“It was a tough decision emotionally,” Giordani said. “But financially, it was a no-brainer. We were not seeing the signs of progress downtown that we needed to see.”

Giordani said the Boardman location is thriving, and their mobile OH Donut service is doing good business.

In a Facebook post announcing the closing, Giordani wrote “We have been part of the Downtown Youngstown community as business owners since 2013 (and were even residents for a while) and we’ve seen the highs and lows.

“Sadly, Downtown has still not fully recovered from the losses it suffered during 2020 and while we badly wanted to be part of that comeback story, as we were part of the revitalization story years prior, we simply can’t.”

For much of this year, the downtown location has also been plagued by road construction along Commerce Street, which Giordani said hampered customers’ access to the shop.

She expressed the frustration she felt in dealing with city officials.

“It’s a continual struggle for city support with signage and communication about road closures, detours, and improvement projects that impede customer access,” she wrote in her Facebook post.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.