One of Vancouver’s most recognizable donut counters is rolling its price tag back to 1979 for a single day.
Lee’s Donuts is marking National Donut Day on June 5 with a run of retro pricing across its shops, and the numbers are doing a little time travel.
For that one day, a half dozen donuts drops to $10 and a full dozen lands at $19.79.
That second number is not a typo.
It is a nod to 1979, the year the Lee family first started handing donuts over the counter at Granville Island Public Market.
National Donut Day lands on the first Friday of June every year, and Lee’s is leaning all the way into it.
The deal runs all day, in store only, at every Lee’s Donuts location except the YVR Airport counter.
Free coffee is included all day too, which quietly turns the whole thing into a cheap breakfast run if you time it right.
Lee’s has been a Granville Island staple for decades, the kind of handmade donut shop that still pulls weekend lineups outside the Public Market.
The donuts are made fresh daily on the same classic recipes the shop opened with in 1979.
Since then it has grown from that single market stall into a multi store operation around Greater Vancouver, with counters in Gastown, Lower Lonsdale, Steveston, Brentwood, and the Tsawwassen malls.
That spread means most people in the region have a Lee’s within reach for the deal, with the airport shop the lone exception.
The brand has been expanding fast lately, recently bringing on a new president to push locations well beyond the city.
This is a rare moment where one of those longtime local names is the one running the holiday deal instead of a national chain.
A quick heads up if you are planning around it.
The deal is June 5 only and does not carry over to the weekend, so this is a same day errand, not a leisurely Saturday one.
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