Dunkin’ Donuts

A Sign Worth Stopping For

A massive chocolate-frosted donut with multicolored sprinkles sits atop a sign pole at the corner of East 7th Street and Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach. It’s roughly the size of a compact car. It’s also the only sign of its kind at any Dunkin’ location in the country. That combination of scale and singularity is why this particular franchise shows up on road-trip lists and photography guides rather than just coffee-run apps.

The donut is the visit. The coffee is optional.

What You’re Looking At

The sign traces back to Angel Food Donuts, a Southern California chain that used giant programmatic signage on its shops during the postwar decades. Programmatic signs, fashioned in the shape of whatever a business sold, were a common sight on major boulevards when car culture was young. Businesses needed something visible from a moving vehicle, and a 10-foot donut on a pole tends to work. Most of those signs are long gone.

The City of Long Beach identified this particular sign in its Historic Context Statement, noting that programmatic architecture encountered today should be considered significant even if altered. That’s a formal acknowledgment of something locals already knew.

The Near-Miss

When Newport Beach-based Frontier Restaurant Group purchased the site to build a new Dunkin’, the plan called for the sign to come down permanently. Community members petitioned City Hall, started a “Save the Giant Donut” Facebook page, and the city ultimately ruled that the business couldn’t open without the sign restored to its place.

The restored donut looks different from the original. The pink frosting it wore for decades was replaced with chocolate glaze and multicolored sprinkles. Some longtime residents still prefer the old version. The debate hasn’t fully settled. Either way, it’s back up, and it’s staying.

The Visit

This is a short stop. You park, look up, take your photos, and move on — or stay for a coffee if the line is short. The location has a drive-thru and a decent-sized dining area inside, but nothing about the interior is worth lingering over. The entire point is outside.

For photography, the parking lot gives you the clearest upward angle. Morning light from the east works well before noon. The sign is also visible from across the street if you want the full structure in frame. It’s not a challenging shot, and the donut is large enough to photograph clearly from a phone.

Part of a Larger Circuit

The Long Beach donut sits on a loose circuit of giant-donut landmarks still standing across the greater LA area, alongside Randy’s Donuts in Inglewood and The Donut Hole in La Puente, among others. Each one represents a different moment in Southern California’s roadside design history. This one is the only entry on that list that ended up absorbed into a national chain, which gives it a strange, specific kind of staying power. It survived exactly because enough people cared that it did.