The line at Randy’s Donuts, the first Northern California location of the world-famous Los Angeles chain, started forming in the early hours of Friday morning. One person showed up at 4 a.m., pulling up a chair in the small parking lot under the giant rooftop doughnut on Homestead Road in Santa Clara. 

At 7 a.m., the doors flung open for about 500 people who had been standing in line for hours. The 6,000 doughnuts baked the night before for this big day — more than 50 varieties, from strawberry jelly-filled to matcha tea and chocolate twist — began to dwindle. “It melts when I take a bite,” swooned Rezwana Imam, who drove from Fremont with her husband, Arif Hasan, for the occasion and waited in line for nearly three hours. “It was worth it.”

The crowds, balloons and television crews were not unusual for a buzzy Bay Area opening. But an ongoing turf war, stirred up because of a legacy doughnut business’s location across the street from Randy’s, has made this a truly unprecedented debut. Chatter has been brewing online for months between devotees of Stan’s Donuts, a family-run neighborhood institution since 1959, and locals who are excited about the arrival of Randy’s, which has been featured in movies and on television over the years. 

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CEO Mark Kelegian flies in for opening day at Randy’s Donuts in Santa Clara, Calif., on July 31, 2026.

Employees help customers grab doughnuts at Randy’s Donuts in Santa Clara, Calif., on July 31, 2026.

Opening day at Randy’s Donuts in Santa Clara, Calif., on July 31, 2026.

Randy’s started in Inglewood in 1952. It operated as a single location until 2018, when former trial attorney and casino operator Mark Kelegian of Newport Beach, who purchased the business in 2015, started expanding company stores in California and beyond. In 2019, Kelegian took Randy’s on an expansion tear throughout the U.S. and into Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. Today, there are over 50........

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