HOUSTON – Shipley Do-Nuts, the iconic Houston-born doughnut shop brand, is celebrating its 85th birthday with a groundbreaking on Oct. 28 for its new 60,000-square-foot corporate headquarters at Cullen and the Gulf Freeway in Houston.
The new headquarters is well-known to Houstonians as the location of the old Finger Furniture flagship showroom and, before that, Buff Stadium, home to minor league baseball’s Houston Buffalos from 1928-1961.
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The facility, which is slated to open in the last quarter of 2022, will feature a full working flagship Shipley Do-Nut shop with an interior drive-thru going right through the building that will provide a unique look behind the scenes into the making of the doughnuts.
The headquarters will be named the L.W. “Bud” Shipley Jr. Support Center, after founder Lawrence Shipley’s son, who grew the brand from a local family business to a chain of nearly 200 locations.
“Bud Shipley was the visionary behind the company’s initial growth, and it’s only fitting that our new support center, which we’re building to accommodate our growing company, be named after him,” said Shipley Do-Nuts CEO Clifton Rutledge. “I can think of no better way to celebrate our birthday than by breaking ground on our headquarters for our next 85 years.”
The two-story building will be home to the company’s new yeast doughnut mix-manufacturing facility and a doughnut innovation center, plus office space for about 130 people. It will replace Shipley’s longtime Houston headquarters on North Main Street, which the company has occupied for more than 40 years and has since outgrown, with some employees now working from several additional buildings in the area. Shipley has added some 60 corporate employees in the past two years.