The deal on DiLo’s Doughnuts

By Sophia Afsar-Keshmiri, Chronicle Summer Staff

From a small trailer at 143 Broad Street in Glens Falls, Chris and Lucia DiLorenzo bake and sell doughnuts every weekend from 8 a.m. until they run out.

Their Saturdays and Sundays begin early, usually between 3 and 4 a.m. Their two children, Christopher, 10, and Christina, 8, “sleep in the truck.” Once they wake up, it’s all hands on deck and they enthusiastically help.

DiLo’s specializes in apple cider doughnuts as well as the Holy Donoli, which is filled with cannoli cream and topped with chocolate sauce; Mr. DiLorenzo advised a fork when I tried it.

He offers various cake doughnuts, including ones newly invented.

Two weekends ago, Mrs. DiLorenzo says Chris had “been wanting a key lime pie. So he’s like, well, why don’t we turn that into a donut? So he did.”

Mr. DiLorenzo said they have concocted “probably close…45, 50 flavors now.” He does the inventing; she decorates these larger than life treats.

Son Christopher enjoys working with customers; daughter Christina “helps us make the doughnuts” and is the “ taste tester,” says Christopher.

The business was pandemic born. Mr. DiLorenzo is a barber at Rad Razors. Home during the Covid lockdown, “I started toying around in the kitchen” and he “went down a rabbit hole.”

Mr. DiLorenzo says he “always picked apart people’s cider doughnuts — like maybe it doesn’t have enough spice. Maybe it’s overcooked, undercooked.”

Beginning on his backporch, he says he learned “a thousand ways how not to make a cider doughnut.”

After much experimentation he touts a “perfect” apple cider doughnut recipe that he says uses “a very expensive, high quality cinnamon.”

He says, “You taste the love that it took me to create these doughnuts.”

Mr. DiLorenzo says “what a lot of people do is they just use a doughnut mix.”

He says his key lime is “a graham cracker and granola doughnut with key lime glaze, whipped cream in the middle and then crushed graham crackers on top.”

For Heath Bar doughnuts, “not only did we put, you know, the toppings on the doughnut,” there are “actual Heath Bar pieces in the doughnut.”

“Our doughnuts are fresh — every ingredient. There’s no preservatives…We do it fresh every weekend.”

“Supply chain issues” have been an issue. “A lot of my suppliers are in Albany, and I’ll drive my truck down there, it’ll cost me 50 dollars just to drive down there…And I have to go to 10 stores, where I used to have to go to one or two. So it takes a whole day of time.”

‘Whatever the Lord Wants’

DiLo’s slogan is “Inspired by God, Created by Man.”

The DiLorenzos went through a 2005 tragedy in Glens Falls — “my father made a horrible mistake,” says Chris. He said they initially wanted to be “far from” here to escape the pain.

Mrs. DiLorenzo says, “It is just funny that God has brought us back to Glens Falls, and even though we remember what happened here we no longer feel the pain.” She said Glens Falls once represented “tragedy” for the family, but now represents “triumph for us.”

She said that Chris is “an assistant preacher at Apostolic Christian Fellowship” on Warren Street.

The DiLorenzos credit God’s will for their going from baking doughnuts on their back porch to selling them “under a tent in the Rite-Aid parking lot.”

Eventually, says Mr. DiLorenzo, “one of my customers from the barbershop, he had this trailer and it was for sale” and “we were able to get a trailer, all the equipment and it was just like God lined up every step of the way….It’s his business, not mine.”

“God gave me the logo, he told me how to run the business, what to do to dedicate the business to God, as long as I’m putting his kingdom first, the rest of it to fall into place….he literally helped us every step of the way.”

They say they’re careful not to overstep about their religion. “We don’t ever want to push anything on anybody,” Mrs. DiLorenzo says, “but we want people to feel the love, and we try to show the love that God would want us to show. And you know, if people need a prayer, they know where to come.”

She continued, “We literally have people that come here, they’ll say, you know, your doughnuts are great, but can you pray with us?” Daughter Christina says it’s her favorite part of helping out. Her parents agree, saying that “talking about God to people” and getting to spend time together are their favorite parts of running the business.

As to the future of the business, Mr. DiLorenzo said “whatever the Lord wants…he has us here right now …I believe in everything has a season….If it’s his will…to provide us a spot, or move it forward, then we’ll do what he really instructs to do.”

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