Level 5 Donuts, Atwood’s newest doughnut shop, opened its doors May 3 to a swarm of customers, even as renovations on a kitchen continued behind the scenes.

Aaron Mooney and Caitlin Rockey started Level 5 Donuts in 2019 as a pop-up shop. Level 5 makes 100% vegan and cruelty-free doughnuts.

Level 5, 2086 Atwood Ave., started down the street in the basement of Bar Corallini selling doughnuts to local businesses across Madison. It later moved to 931 E. Main St. for its production facility.

“We make them, fry them, glaze them, get them ready to go, pack them up in our baker boxes (and) load them in the delivery van,” Mooney said.

After six years of pop-ups and wholesale, Rockey and Mooney decided it was time to move to a permanent storefront.

“I know that every business comes with their own stress, regardless of like the way that you’re doing it, you know. But I would say that, like pop-ups and festivals and wholesale, it’s just every day is just a grind of driving around the entire city,” Mooney said.

When Level 5 opened in May, its location did not have a kitchen. Level 5 worked with the health department to get everything up to code, allowing the business to sell doughnuts out of the Atwood location while construction finished. The kitchen now has windows to allow the customer to see behind the scenes of the business.

During the first month, the menu was a combination of Level 5’s most popular flavors and a mix of doughnuts never done before, like an old-fashioned cake doughnut. Level 5 plans to regularly cycle the menu to keep things fresh.

“You’ll see the classic flavors that we have: vanilla, chocolate, blueberry, lemon, churro, things like that. And then you’ll see most of the menu rotating and changing,” Mooney explained.

Mooney is most excited for what’s to come with an in-house kitchen. Once settling in, there will be time to experiment with new menu items, from unique fillings to fresh takes on both sweet and savory offerings.

“We’ll do more savory things. We’ll still have obviously sweets,” Mooney said. “We’ll have coffee. We’ll have sandwiches. We’ll have doughnuts. We’ll have all sorts of things, and just really (be) able to play (with offerings).”

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