Mark Ostlund

Mark Ostlund was an American businessman who spent more than four decades at Sandy's Donuts and Coffee Shop in West Fargo, North Dakota, the bakery his parents founded in 1983. As its second generation owner and chief executive from 2002 to 2022, he helped turn a single neighbourhood doughnut shop into one of the best known local businesses in the Fargo-Moorhead area. His death, at the age of 62, was announced by his son Jeff Ostlund on the company's Facebook page on the evening of Friday 6 November 2026.

Sandy's Donuts was started by his father, Sandy Ostlund, a former trucker who had learned to make buttermilk doughnuts in his mother's kitchen in Tioga, North Dakota, and his mother, Donna. They opened the shop in September 1983 in a former West Fargo bakery. Mark, one of their three children, left college during his second year to help. "I have been involved with the doughnut shop for all but the first six months when I was in my second year of college," he later told The Forum.

In 2002 the business moved into a former Hardee's building on Sheyenne Street in West Fargo, Donna retired and Mark took over running it. That same year Krispy Kreme arrived in Fargo with great fanfare. Ostlund was unruffled, telling The Forum that the hype only made people want to buy more doughnuts, and that his were better. Krispy Kreme closed its Fargo store about five years later. After his father died in October 2008, Mark described his role as safeguarding Sandy's legacy, saying his job was "to not mess things up."

Under his leadership the business grew substantially. A second shop opened on Broadway in downtown Fargo in 2014 and a third in Fargo's Osgood neighbourhood in 2019, and Sandy's began supplying doughnuts daily to gas stations and stores across eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota. By the company's 40th anniversary in 2023 it employed about 100 people and made between 6,000 and 16,000 doughnuts a day. Sandy's was repeatedly named Best Bakery in the Best of the Midwest contest.

In 2022 he handed day to day leadership to his son Jeff, who had started working for him at 13, later served in the Marines and earned a business degree from North Dakota State University. Mark remained a co-owner. In a 2025 interview with The Forum he said the business was in good hands and that his son would probably make it more profitable than he ever had.

The family said Ostlund died unexpectedly from health complications. He was survived by his sons Jeff and Jesse and his daughter Jenna. His funeral was arranged for 13 November 2026 at Salem Evangelical Free Church in Moorhead, Minnesota, to be followed, fittingly, by coffee and doughnuts.