Delicious Orchards puts out over 50,000 pies and 11,000 doughnuts as part of Thanksgiving tradition

For the eighth year, Jim Murdoch is covering how over 300 employees volunteer for the controlled chaos of producing 50,000 and 11,000 cider doughnuts.

Jim Murdoch

Nov 27, 2024, 5:44 PM

Updated 21 days ago

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Black Friday is still two days away. But when it comes to pies and doughnuts, Wednesday will see the biggest sales of the year at Delicious Orchards in Colts Neck.
Crowds began forming two hours before the scheduled 8 a.m. opening. To the delight of many huddled in the frosty outside air, the doors swung open just after 7:30 a.m.
People lined up an hour before the shop opened.
Mike McDonald, Delicious Orchards
The "Wall of Cookies"
"We were like way down the road. We thought we would never get in, but five minutes, we are in. They have a great system here," said Lynn McGraw, who moved here two years ago from Wisconsin.
"We try to do this balance of keeping tradition of a hundred years," said Mike McDonald, whose family has owned Delicious Orchards for more than 50 years.
More than 300 employees sculpt, bake and handcraft hundreds of thousands of Thanksgiving staples.
Back in the pie room, everything is handmade. The employees can mass-produce more than 10,000 pies in just one day.
An estimated 10,000 pies, 11,000 donut sleeves, and even more goodies will have moved out the door by closing time to end up on your Thanksgiving tables all over the northeast.