Phatso's doughnuts are a Chester fixture

As a teenager working at Dunkin' Donuts in Philadelphia's Parkside neighborhood, Rick Wilcox never thought about a future as an entrepreneur - until the day a stranger peered in the shop window and walked inside with a prediction.

"I was watching how you worked, and I want to tell you that someday you will own your own doughnut shop," Wilcox recalled the stranger as saying. Wilcox told the story last week, sitting in the office of, yes, his own doughnut shop, Phatso's Bakery in Chester.

Then the man did something that Wilcox still can't quite understand. He took an Indian-head candle out of his pocket and gave it to him with instructions never to light it.

"If I light it, I'll never get the shop," said Wilcox, 53, pulling the dusty yellow candle down from a shelf. "I've had it all that time."

But even the world's greatest soothsayer could not have foreseen how well things would play out for Wilcox after he took over the old Ann's Donut Shop on Welsh Street in 2001, more than 20 years after the stranger's prediction. A dozen years later, customers begin lining up for Phatso's sweet, airy, hand-cut doughnuts before dawn, eager to taste Wilcox's treats - routinely voted the best in Delaware County - before they sell out.

Phatso's fare is the tasty blue-collar alternative to the $5 "cronut" and overcrowded hipster hangouts deep-frying maple-bacon doughnuts, and Wilcox's success story has made his bakery the poster child for a decades-old dream of civic leaders: commercial revitalization of Chester's time-ravaged downtown.

"You really need those kind of anchor institutions to keep the momentum and to show others that downtown can be a success," said Jacqueline Parker, executive director of the Chester Economic Development Authority.

Like Harrah's Casino or Philadelphia Union soccer, Phatso's is a destination for out-of-towners, who follow the scent of the pillow-soft orbs of fried dough - in traditional flavors that need no exotic embellishments - whenever they are in town.

"We hear from people from Baltimore, from Philadelphia, from outside the area, whenever they come by Chester they get Phatso's doughnuts," Parker said.

At dawn on a recent Friday, Phatso's was an oasis of activity on an otherwise desolate commercial strip as a slow stream of commuters pulled into SEPTA's transit hub across the street. As the sun rose over the Delaware River, several cars idled in front of the store while their owners dashed in for a morning hit on their daily commute.

"It's for the guys on the job. They love them," said Brian Washington, ordering two dozen to bring to workers at a refinery in New Jersey, a regular Friday treat.

Bernadette Foster works at the transit station and stops in daily for a small coffee and three glazed dots, or holes.

"They're delicious," she said as Amy Hartshorn, her hair in a net, filled her order.

"Best doughnuts on the East Coast," said another daily customer, Vince Jackson. "Every day, even on my days off, and I come from Delaware." He left with a dozen and a Danish.

As the small store filled up, Wilcox and his two helpers, son Brandon and "finisher", John Washington, mixed, kneaded, cut, fried, and decorated doughnuts by hand, two dozen at a time. They also bake muffins, Danish and coffee cakes. They had been at it since midnight.

"This is Phatso's. This is everybody," Wilcox said as he kneaded another four-pound slab of dough.

Customers can watch the whole low-tech process from the front of the store. When Hartshorn gets jammed up at the counter, the others pitch in to take orders.

Floyd Riggs said he stops by every day to get a glazed doughnut for his wife.

"I remember when it was Ann's Donuts," he said. "Whatever secrets she taught him, he kept it. That's the beauty of it."

For Wilcox, glaze runs in his veins. He worked for Dunkin' Donuts for eight years, then moved to Pepperidge Farm in Downingtown, where he ran the machines that made cookies and goldfish.

When the facility moved farther away, he took a job at Scott Paper in Tinicum. By then he was married and had a growing family. He was making good money, but when Ann's closed in the late 1990's, he was ready to get back to the kitchen.

"I got tired of being a factory worker," he said, though his wife was not so thrilled about his giving up a steady job to buy a business. He named the shop after his chubby youngest son, who is now 6-foot-2 and 195 pounds, and does not appreciate being called Phatso anymore.

Whether it was the name or the recipes, business grew, and by the mid-2000s Wilcox employed seven people. But since the recession, Phatso's has lost 35 to 40 percent of its customers. Other businesses have done worse. John's Doggie Shop, a fixture on East Seventh Street since it was founded by Greek immigrants in 1948, closed in March.

"Business will come back," Wilcox said. "It just takes time."

Meanwhile, with the morning rush over, it's time for Wilcox to tackle cake orders. Then he'll clean up and leave by 1 p.m.

"Twelve years, six days a week, he's been doing this," said Washington, laying a coat of chocolate on a final two dozen cream-filled.

Wilcox still has not lit the Indian-head candle given to him by the mystery man those many years ago. And he doesn't plan to any time soon.

"Maybe when I retire," he said.

See the life cycle of a doughnut, from kneading to the display case, at www.inquirer.com/phatsoEndText