What is Chin Up Donuts?
Main Street wakes up slowly. The galleries open at ten, the restaurants at five, and for the first hours of the day the most cheerful storefront on the block is a small, brightly painted doughnut shop with a pastry case that empties before lunch.
Chin Up Donuts belongs to Alex McEntire, and it is, in her words, a woman-owned doughnut business on a mission to spread positivity with rings of dough. It started in the pandemic, when McEntire took orders online and by social-media message and pulled up outside customers’ homes a few hours later with an orange-and-pink box. That became a shop on Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard in North Scottsdale, where Phoenix New Times named Chin Up the Valley’s best doughnuts, and then, by 2023, a second shop here at 7021 E Main St.
The doughnuts are the distinctive part. Chin Up makes brioche doughnuts from scratch, with real butter, real milk and real eggs, and the result is denser and more bread-like than a classic glazed ring, buttery rather than sugary. That base carries flavors that would collapse a lighter doughnut: an Everything Bagel, a Pizza Party topped with pepperoni and melted cheese, a Mac and Cheese Fritter, alongside Lavender Fields and the rainbow-sprinkled Birthday Suit.
At the end of 2025, McEntire closed the North Scottsdale shop, citing rising costs and slower sales, and consolidated on Main Street. So this is now the only Chin Up, which makes it one of the few places in the gallery district that is genuinely, stubbornly small.
How to do Chin Up
Go early. The Old Town shop opens at 7 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday and at 8 a.m. on Sunday and Monday, and it closes at 3 p.m., or at noon on Sunday and Monday, or whenever the doughnuts run out. The case is at its fullest in the first hour, and the savory specials go first.
Order across the line. The house style is the sweet-savory mix, so a good box has both. Take an Everything Bagel or whatever savory special is in the case, a seasonal sweet flavor, and one classic for the person who will not try pepperoni on a doughnut. The menu rotates, and flavors draw on travel and on Arizona ingredients, so what’s in the case changes from week to week.
Pair it with Pony Up. The coffee comes from Pony Up Coffee Co., Chin Up’s sister company, roasted locally for the shop, with syrups and sauces made in-house. It is a full espresso bar, not an afterthought, which makes Chin Up a real breakfast stop rather than a box to go.
Order letters for the occasion. The shop’s custom letter doughnuts spell names, numbers and messages, with hearts and cactus shapes as add-ons. Birthday tables and office mornings are what they’re for; order ahead online.
Walk it off on Main Street. Chin Up sits among the galleries of the Main Street arts district, next to the Růže Cake House building at 7033, so a doughnut and a slow walk past the bronze windows is the right Old Town morning. For a sit-down breakfast with more than doughnuts, Beginner’s Luck opens at 9 a.m. at the east end of the street, and the best coffee shops guide covers the rest of downtown.
A pandemic delivery business that outlasted its first shop
Chin Up’s story tracks the arc of a lot of small food businesses in the 2020s. The pandemic created a market for treats delivered to the door and a generation of home bakers and cooks who filled it. McEntire was one of them, and unlike most, she built the delivery operation into a storefront, then a second storefront, then a reputation. Phoenix New Times’ Best Doughnuts award, which she has called one of the best moments of her life, came at the North Scottsdale shop, and the Old Town shop followed with the same playful decor of bright paint and vintage furniture.
Main Street was an unusual choice for a doughnut shop. The arts district has always been a daytime-and-Thursday-night street, built for browsing bronzes and Western paintings, with restaurants at the edges and a few cafes like Arcadia Farms a block over. A morning business with a line of locals gave the middle of the street a different rhythm. It also joined a small cluster of sweet shops on the gallery row: Růže Cake House next door and Gelato Cimmino a block east.
Then the math changed. In a note on the shop’s website, McEntire wrote that rising costs, a slowing of sales and an uncertain retail landscape forced her to close the original North Scottsdale shop at the end of 2025, after five years. She kept Old Town. The note asks customers to support the remaining shop “now more than ever,” and promises more collaborations and events from the single location.
The honest assessment: Chin Up’s doughnuts are heavier than the airy glazed rings some people want, and the savory flavors are a deliberate provocation. But they are made from scratch by an owner who is still behind the business every day, and on a street of expensive things, a few dollars for a pepperoni doughnut and a good coffee is one of Main Street’s best bargains.