Gibson’s Donuts reopens Friday, May 15, at 5 a.m. — never mind the sign that says 5:30 a.m. — but the well-oiled doughnut machine went in motion 15 hours earlier, at 2 p.m. Thursday, May 14.

Employees showed up to start cooking cake doughnuts, and the familiar smell of sweet fried dough filled the little shop on Mt. Moriah. Missing was the treacly scent of glaze, as the dipping step was just starting and the yeast doughnuts weren’t even being fried yet.

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But boxes were being folded. Tyler Stover said he would fold at least 1,000 of them before his day was done. Chairs were set down the center of the shop that will act as a guide for the socially-distanced line that will no doubt start forming as soon as the door opens.

“I’m expecting a line all day,” said Britton DeWeese. “We’ll be cooking the rest of the day and all through the night.”

General manager DeWeese, 41, has been running the show for some time. He’s the son of owner Don DeWeese, who was out of town to play golf on Thursday but will be around for the opening on Friday.

“My dad shows up to throw doughnuts at everyone, but I’ve been doing it for a while,” he said.

And he loves it, it turns out.

“OK, so I knew I loved my job. I mean, I make doughnuts for a living,” he said. “But I didn’t know how much I loved my job of putting smiles on peoples’ faces until it was taken away from me. I really, really missed it and am so excited about reopening.”

All service will be takeout, which only makes sense.

“If I had people at tables, I don’t know how we could have a line and keep 6 feet between people,” DeWeese said.

He has it all figured out. Like many businesses, the floor tiles are 12 inches, which makes it simple to mark distance. Instead of using an ‘X’ to mark the spot, he has doughnut stickers on the way that will be in place to show excited folks where to stand.

Gibson’s is an institution, a place where mostly retired men gather on weekdays for coffee, a doughnut and a bit of gossip, where kids in pajamas show up for a sugar rush on Saturday morning, where teenagers hang out on Saturday night.

“It’s like a Sonic in the ‘50s on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s so crowded it’s like being at Raiford’s,” DeWeese said, a reference to the popular Paula & Raiford’s Disco in Downtown.

But right now, that can’t happen. Right now, folks will have to be happy to get a dozen or so to go.

“We’ll have everything ready,” said manager Will Geater. “All the varieties except the jellies, because they take longer. We’ll get those back later.”

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The number of doughnuts? Thousands. Right now how many thousand is unknown.

“I think we’ll sell at least 1,000 dozen,” DeWeese said. “People are ready for doughnuts. It was so hard to close down, but we knew it was the right thing for us to do at the time.”

Regulars knew they could start calling in orders at 5 p.m.; by 7 p.m. a bulletin board was half-filled with scribbled notes. The two people answering the phones couldn’t keep up. Doughnuts are in demand. (Oh, go on. It’s 901-682-8200.)

Gibson’s closed March 21, and at the time was still cooking doughnuts 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“We never slowed down after the holidays,” he said. “I guess no one went on a diet in January this year, because we stayed busy.

“I hated closing, and I second-guessed it when I saw how other people, like Garibaldi’s, were making it work. I still think it was the right thing. I know that now is the right time to open back up. I hear from people all the time. This is like some kind of sign of normal to them, Gibson’s opening back up.”

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He knows we’re still in a global pandemic, and he and the staff at Gibson’s will be in masks and gloves. They’re following new rules. For example, if you serve doughnuts, you don’t touch the cash register. They’ll do curbside service if you call your order in.

They don’t know yet what they’ll do if there’s a large crowd outside the shop, as there’s only room for 10 to stand inside.

“We have as much as we can figured out and we’ll figure the rest of it out when it comes up. We’ve been doing business one way in this shop for 50 years, so this is all new.”