Four Mile Bakery & General Store keeps family tradition alive through baked goods

Four Mile Bakery & General Store, is a hub of fresh baked donuts and homemade goods from different Amish communities. Located in Jackson County along Four Mile Road, it offers both a bakery and homemade goods produced by numerous Amish families. 

Before the donut buffet shelves are stocked with Amish goods including: 

  • Jams 
  • Cheese 
  • Fudge 
  • Pickles 
Four Mile Bakery and General Store's famous Wagon Wheels donuts. Photo by Raphaëlle Anglade

“It’s just always been a thing [the donut buffet] that we came out here almost every weekend or every other weekend,” says Paige McVeigh, a frequent customer at Four Mile Bakery. 

The Bakery

Donuts are self-serve with boxes and disposable gloves available for people to build their own dozen. Once that difficult task is complete, there is plenty of comfortable seating. On a cold morning, a family can sit by one of the two fireplaces located in the building. On a warm summer morning, they can take their donuts outside to sit on the bakery’s large porch. 

Shawn and Megan Richendollar opened Four Mile Bakery with the help of their Amish neighbors as a place for their families to work together as their children grew up. As Mennonites, the Richendollars can use the electricity needed to run the bakery while the goods are supplied by local Amish farms.  

“We were thinking of a business that we wanted to do, where our children could work with us in the business as they grew up,” Shawn says. “We worked out a plan where we could work together: we’d build a bakery.” 

20 years later, the bakery is a community staple, and word of their donuts has spread for miles. Their most popular donut is the wagon wheel, which is a large, glazed donut that they sell individually or by half a dozen. The bakery offers a wide variety of other donuts including: 

  •  Cake donuts  
  • Reese’s peanut butter-filled donuts 
  • Jelly filled 
  • Creme filled 
  • Bear claws 
  • Cinnamon twists  
Four Mile Bakery and General Store owner Shawn Richendollar helping customers at the checkout. Photo by Raphaëlle Anglade.

“You can’t beat [their donuts],” McVeigh says. “They’re the best.” 

About 100 dozen donuts are baked fresh every morning by Megan and a handful of employees. The donuts are entirely handmade in the back of the bakery; from hand rolling the shapes to spreading the icing on top with a butter knife. 

“We mix the dough back here in a room where there’s a big mixer, and then it has to rise. It’s a yeast product, so from start to finish it’s three hours. And then they let it rise, and then they dump it out on this table, and then she rolls it out,” Shawn says. “Then she cuts the donuts out like that, and she puts them on the rack that’s down there on the end, they rise again. And then we immerse them in tallow to fry them.”

Four Mile Bakery and General Store's Wagon Wheels and cherry cake donuts displayed on the donut buffet. Photo by Raphaëlle Anglade.

Customers travel from all around southeastern Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky looking to try their donuts. 

“It does take both of us, and it takes God in the mix too, because we feel very blessed that people come to the country like this, two or three hours away to drive here to get donuts,” Megan says.  

The General Store

With their shared Anabaptist heritage, Amish and Mennonites will cooperate in different activities. Although they tend to live separately because of their differences, they may live near each other, according to Amish Studies. They share many of the same beliefs and customs, but Mennonites allow themselves more access to modern technology. That is why they are often seen as business partners.” 

Stand filled with Amish made jams, preserves, jellies and more. Photo by Raphaëlle Anglade.

The general store portion of Four Mile Bakery & General Store is supplied by other Amish Mennonite businesses. The canned goods come from a cannery in Millersburg, the maple syrup is supplied by a local Amish man down the road and the candies come from an Amish distributor in Pennsylvania.