I walked past both of them on the same errand Saturday morning. Voodoo Doughnut on Third had a line down the block at ten, mostly out of towners, photographing the pink box before eating anything out of it. Twenty minutes later I was at Blue Star, no line, six people at the counter, one of them explaining brioche dough to a guy who had asked.
Same category. Same city. Same forty five minutes of my morning.
Portland has been arguing about which one is better for years, and the argument is wrong. They are not competing for the same thing.
Voodoo is not selling a doughnut. Voodoo is selling a photograph, a souvenir, and a story you tell when you get home. The pink box does more work than anything inside it. The bacon maple bar is famous because it is describable, not because it is the best thing on the tray. That is not an insult. Building a product a stranger can describe to someone who has never been to your city is genuinely hard, and Voodoo got there first.
Blue Star is selling the doughnut. Small batch, brioche, sold out by afternoon. The positioning is craft and scarcity, and the proof arrives in your mouth in about four seconds.
Two brands can own the same shelf without ever touching each other, as long as each one is honest about what the customer is actually buying.
Here is the part that gets lost. The danger is not choosing the wrong one of these strategies. The danger is choosing both. I have watched this from inside brand strategy rooms more times than I want to count: the client wants the tourist volume and the craft credibility, so the brief comes back saying accessible and premium, playful and serious, mass and considered. What you get is a brand that photographs badly and tastes fine.
Voodoo has never once pretended the doughnut is the point. Blue Star has never once made a novelty. Neither one is confused about itself, and that clarity is the whole asset.
Test yours the same way. If a customer had to explain your brand in one sentence to a stranger standing in an airport, what would they actually say? If the honest answer is the photograph, stop apologizing for it and make the photograph better. If the honest answer is the thing itself, stop chasing the line down the block.
What you get is a brand that photographs badly and tastes fine.
I bought from Blue Star, for the record, and ate it on the walk home. Truffles smelled it on my hands and followed me around the apartment for ten minutes, then lost interest completely once it became clear I had nothing left. Barnaby never got up. Neither of them has an opinion about positioning, which is most of why I keep them around.