Why You Should Avoid Walmart When Buying Donuts

We all love a good donut, don't we? These delightful little grab-and-go treats are perfect for breakfast, dessert, or any indulgent snack in between. But you don't always have time to swing by a proper donut shop to grab a fresh-baked bite, nor the time and energy to bake your own. Enter: the grocery store donut. These bagged delights aren't exactly the freshest thing on the block, but they're sweet treats and perfectly passable snack stuff when done right. We've brought you a list of grocery store-bought donut brands, ranked worst to best, to help you know exactly what morsels to run for when you see them on the shelf. By our metrics, the one thing you'll want to avoid? Walmart's Great Value brand of donuts, and in particular its Donut Variety box, which are a sad, crumbly, dry affront to the senses.

Even if you avoid the absolute worst times to shop at Walmart where the products are at their lowest in both quantity and quality, there's no saving the Great Value donuts. You get a box of 10 rolls with 4 donuts in each, either chocolate or powdered sugar. Unfortunately, the powdered sugar dissolves instantaneously and the chocolate melts and breaks away from the donut itself in chunks, leaving behind a naked and dry ring of bread that works better as a sponge than a dessert. Unless you like super dry cake laden with artificial sweeteners, this one should be a pass.

We know what you're thinking: These donuts are all made and packaged with shelf stability in mind. Obviously none of them will be fresh as an actual bakery's donut, and who's to say if the toppings will be any better elsewhere? Can you really get a high-quality grocery store donut that captures that perfect fluff and delicious sweetness of a freshly-glazed bakery donut, unlike the sad offering Great Value leaves you with? Well, brands like Entenmann's blow those expectations out of the water. These best grocery store packaged donuts are bakery-worthy, with a fairly light cakey-ness and a variety of flavors that Great Value wishes it had. Other brands like Two-Bite and Dunford manage to capture the same winning combos, so what's the deal with Great Value?

Well, the answer is in the name. Great Value is a value brand, meaning you get what you pay for. Sure, the donuts are less than $5 for 10 rolls of mini donuts. Considering some bakeries charge that much for one single full-sized donut, you're really getting a great deal here financially-speaking. But to get you that steep price cut, these donuts rely on plenty of sugar substitutes like dextrose and preservatives like calcium propionate that keep costs low. This also keeps the taste low quality, tragically, and we think it's a difference you'll definitely notice. So when you crave a donut, just skip Great Value's Donut Variety box and scoop up an alternate brand instead.