Between the sugar and the sprinkles, the frosting and the fritters, no customer really knows how to name the donut they want. Accordingly, the donut shop is one of the last places in America where one can successfully conduct commerce by pointing and grunting.
On 23rd Street, Andy’s Donut Stop has provided that setting since 1954. For some, it’s where they snuck out for midnight pastries in their teens. For others, it’s their sandwich stop on the morning commute. For a few, it’s their go-to Vietnamese place. The menu has changed over the years, but its importance as a reliable cafe and gathering space has not.
Currently run by Yi Chow, the shop has changed hands a few times since its original owners, Alberta and Earl Heltsley, established the community staple. Between a beauty salon and a nursing home, Andy’s white-and-red striped awning wraps around the corner of Visalia Ave. The store’s sign features a vintage yellow car full of human-sized donuts. Even without tables (a pandemic casualty), the shop’s interior gets crowded as the morning rush crams up against the counter.
Importantly, Andy’s is also open during the day’s more disquieting hours. The donut shop invites Richmond inside at a time of night when most would be wary to walk the streets.
From 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., Nosh spent an early Saturday morning at Andy’s Donuts. Inside the walls of the donut shop, customers snacked and caffeinated and gambled away the early hours.
Shortly after the shop’s 3 a.m. opening, paramedics Joshua Rogers and Fernando Soto stopped at Andy’s for maple-glazed donuts.
“They’re so light and fluffy,” Rogers said. “There’s just something about them.”
A regular stop on his 12-hour shift, Rogers said his parents used to bring him to Andy’s as a kid in the 1990s.
“My mom still loves it. My dad still loves it,” Rogers said.
Now, he brings his paramedic partners to Andy’s whenever they’re working in west county for the first time.
Though Rogers said the store has remained virtually unchanged over the decades, evidence of historical moments dots the shop.
“Now we are on DoorDash,” a note in the storefront window declares. Scuffed social distancing placards still mark the floor.
At 3:20 a.m., Tofi, a man who referred to himself as unhoused and declined to provide his last name, joined the paramedics as Andy’s earliest customers.
“This is the place to come eat donuts and drink coffee,” Tofi said. A safe place, too, he said, where one can spend time off the streets at night. As Rogers was leaving, Tofi asked if he had extra Narcan. Rogers returned with a pack.
At 3:40 a.m., Bryan Woodward entered the shop, returning from a lucky streak at the San Pablo Casino, where he said he’d won $200 that night playing slots.
What was he going to spend his earnings on? Donut holes.
When asked what makes Andy’s special, Woodward responded, “They’re open.”
Some food shops are defined by their merit, others by their context. In these witching hours, the only other open spots are fast food chains.
And yet, Andy’s really does do it all. It offers “authentic boba tea” and packets of instant ramen, or, one can order the #8 — the “Tofu Bunh Mi” — off the specials menu. Meat eaters can opt instead for the “Ham Samwiche,” a sign outside suggested.
“Do you really have banh mi?” I asked the cashier Alma Hernandez.
“Yes,” Hernandez replied.
“Is it good?” I asked.
“Yes.”
As the nighttime purveyor, Hernandez has to contend with all manner of customers and crises.
At 4 a.m., a man walks in, announces himself “a little hungover,” declares Andy’s “a Richmond staple,” buys a Gatorade, and leaves.
A little while later, a woman runs in asking for jumper cables. Another wants to split a fifty, and mutters into the lottery machine as it eats her ones. Someone attempts to pay for a breakfast sandwich with a $100 bill.
Do they have smaller bills? Hernandez asks.
They do not have smaller bills. The transaction proceeds.
At 4:35 a.m., Ik Egbu, a Chevron plant operator, came to Andy’s for his typical bacon, egg, and cheese on an English muffin. Ten minutes later, Juan, a San Rafael resident who declined to give his last name, came in with his young son, David, after his shift painting a laundromat.
Slowly, the city wakes up. Down 23rd Street, people are towing boats, a tamales truck parks across the street by the Veteran’s Hall, setting up shop by a World War I-era cannon.
By 6 a.m., the customers have become progressively less willing to talk to a reporter and also less likely to tip. The shop is now a tool, a transition space, a task before work — no longer a destination for the determined or destitute. A liminal space, not a third one.
One woman, running out the door for work with a dozen donuts (“I’m on the snack committee!” she yelled as a greeting), said she’d come to Andy’s decades ago as a kid, back when they had half-off donuts after midnight.
So, how are they, really?
“Surprisingly good!” Jim Mac wrote on Google Reviews.
“Best donuts in the town…PERIODT!” Ericka Hill wrote.
Andy’s inspires intense capitalization.
“THE BEST,” Amy Rynearson wrote. “OMG.”
Yet, not everyone’s in agreement.
“Last time I came here, I tried to make it my last,” another wrote. “The donut variations were limited, and they were nothing to fawn over.”
“The donuts taste like old grease,” Jamika Gaddis wrote.
Donuts alone do not define the Andy’s menu, however. Besides typical breakfast fare, they also serve up all sorts of meaty sandwiches. And, right next door at 969 23rd St., owner Randy Chow opened a fried chicken shop in 2022. (Just don’t come too early — they open at 11 a.m.)
Still, Andy’s prides itself on flavor and variety — they’ve even expanded to cronuts, which exploded into the world from the streets of New York City in 2013. These croissant-donuts are textured and deeply chewy, providing a dense reflection on Andy’s usually light fare.
“Oh wow. That glazed one still has birth sheen,” customer Margaux Bauerlein said, referring to the sugar’s shine on the dough. “That’s how fresh the donuts are.”
Beyond the ever-changing menu of Andy’s donuts and cronuts and boba tea, the shop offers a steady consistency: it’s comforting, trusted, and — perhaps most importantly in a city that has seen seismic social and economic changes in the seven decades since the shop opened — still there.
Ack! This story missed the fact that “Andy’s” got its name from a long-time and long time ago owner, the father of Channel 7 ABC news anchor somebody Van Amburg. I’ve forgotten the first name of news anchor Van Amberg, but his dad was called “Andy” which may have been a nickname for the family last name of “Van Amburg” or an actual nickname for the dad’s first name. Before he retired, back in the 1980’s, from our local Channel 7, Van Amburg talked on air about his dad and their family donut shop, and how proud he was to have advanced in his news career to anchor from humble beginnings as a son of a donut shop owner in Richmond.
It’s also possible that the original owners, named in the story, were the parents of. Van Amburg’s mom, and that his dad ran the shop because he was the son-in-law of those founders.
In fact, a few years earlier, the donut shop was for sale because Van Amburg’s dad finally retired and wanted to sell the business. My then-husband and I looked at it as a possible business to buy for him to run, as that was his dream. The shop had a wonderful reputation then, but neither my husband nor I had any experience with running a small family business of any type, and we did not purchase it. But I’ve always remembered that it did sell, and that the new owner kept the name Andy’s thereafter.