Spunky Dunkers New To Arlington Heights, Hopes To Expand

Celebrating two weeks today in Arlington Heights, Spunky Dunkers is filling stomachs with sweet doughnuts, fresh juices, rich ice cream and locally roasted coffee.

A Palatine fixture, the doughnut shop has expanded to its second location at 3441 N. Arlington Heights Road, near Buffalo Grove High School.

After tasting a doughnut from Spunky Dunkers, co-owner Lewis Calabrese believed the product line could increase and that’s the whole idea behind the second location.

In addition to Calabrese, his friends and co-owners Frank Venuti, Phil Hinton, Sam Turzitti and the Palatine shop owners have a partnership to take the household name to the next level.  

“It’s a group effort to take the Spunky Dunkers name and hopefully, you know with God’s blessings, expand upon and open up multiple stores,” Calabrese said.

With only two weeks under their belt, some customers are visiting either because of name recognition or due to curiosity.

“Everybody that comes in is coming in because they have heard of the Spunky Dunkers name or they had a Spunky Dunkers doughnut,” Calabrese said. “The other part of it is that people are curious, ‘What is Spunky Dunkers.’ ”

Dean Nickens of Arlington Heights visited the store Tuesday for the first time. “The iced coffee is really good and I love the cleanliness," he said. Nickens said he was just driving by because he lives fairly close to the shop, and said he’ll be back. 

Spunky Dunkers offers 34 flavors of doughnuts, ranging from chocolate, butter cream, lemon, black raspberry, chocolate iced Bavarian and fan favorite, red velvet.

The shop also has seasonal flavors such apple crisp, pumpkin and strawberry.

 students Emily Valentin and Sarah Lutzow, who on Tuesday visited the store for their second time, said they like the different choices of doughnuts and the ice cream.

With the Arlington Heights location being larger, homemade ice cream will be served as well, along with a private roasted blend of coffee from and fresh juice from Natalie’s Orchid Juice Company.

Calabrese said their main goal is to do one thing and do it well. 

“We wanted to bring a good product to the consumer and that’s the doughnut,” he said. “We figured people are always going want an indulgence, always wanted to have a little something sweet. What better way to do that than with ice cream and doughnuts — that was the whole concept behind this and getting it going.” 

As far as expanding, Calabrese doesn’t want to go too far from their core customers.

“We want to stay in a certain diameter in where we’re at because the name is sort of prevalent to this area,” he said.  

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