Photo of Lone Star Donuts interior by Rachel Stone
The iconic Lone Star Donuts store on Beckley Avenue will close indefinitely starting July 1, according to signs taped to the front door this week.
The 72-year-old company, which started as one donut shop in what is now the Bishop Arts District, is now Lone Star Consolidated Foods, which produces donuts, pastries, bread and biscuits for national chains including Walmart and Sam’s Club.
The production side, in an adjacent facility on Beckley, continues to operate.
But the shop with fresh-baked donuts, breakfast burritos and pigs-in-a-blanket has taken a couple of breaks since 2020, when the retail side was stripped down to Baby Cakes mini cake donuts, pastries and popcorn. Fresh-baked donuts eventually returned, but the company considered closing the store again in December 2021.
Baby cakes and danishes were all that was on the shelves Tuesday.
From a 2020 Advocate Oak Cliff story about the company’s history:
Two couples, the Burdines and the Wards, opened it with one employee who cut the dough, and they produced and sold 300 doughnuts a day. The husbands made deliveries, and the wives ran the shop.
Back then, when the old Dallas streetcar still stopped at Bishop and Davis, it cost 5 cents for two doughnuts and a cup of coffee. In 1957, the Burdines bought out their partners, and in 1963, they moved to their current location on Beckley Avenue. A second-generation owner, Gene Burdine, turned to expansion in the late 1960s, opening 32 retail stores throughout the Dallas area. But a decade later, the company decided to focus on its products for grocery and convenience retail, and it closed all of the Lone Star Donuts franchises.
