Dozens of folks got more of a sweet treat than they bargained for Tuesday and Wednesday at a Garden City Beach doughnut shop.

The Krispy Kreme Cruiser made a stop at the Garden City Beach U.S. 17 location as part of its Glaze the Nation Tour 2012, offering free treats, drinks and prizes to those visiting the eatery for a taste of what has become a Southern institution.

The classic restored 1960 Flexible Starliner bus is on a 260-day, cross-country tour that began on the West Coast and will end Friday in Winston-Salem, N.C., where the company was founded and will celebrate its 75th birthday.

“People will tell us they drive hundreds of miles to get a doughnut all the time,” said Margaret Raxler, assistant manager at the Garden City franchise. “They will tell us they don’t have these up North or back home and they want to try a hot one.”

The famous red sign proclaiming “hot doughnuts now” serves as a magnet to pastry connoisseurs in search of the glazed offering that melts in your mouth when consumed just minutes off the conveyer belt. Red is an appropriate color for the sign on the Grand Strand, where local stores see sales heat up exponentially as tourists take over the summer months.

Raxler estimated that the Garden City shop is going through 8,064 doughnuts per day right now, and that’s just the number of glazed.

“I always look forward to going to Krispy Kreme,” said Becky Tengowski, who said she has a doughnut stop near the top of her list each time she visits from Cannonsburg, Ky. “We don’t just eat them for breakfast. We always have to take a few dozen home.

“One for the road and one for later and another for family. It’s a big highlight for us going there.”

The number of round treats sold is likely to increase significantly Friday, when the company celebrates its birthday worldwide by offering a dozen glazed for 75 cents with the purchase of any dozen doughnuts.

“Whew,” exclaimed Myrtle Beach Market Manager Preston Lassiter when asked how many doughnuts he thinks will be sold. “We’ve never done anything like this before. It really could be astronomical.”

All of the Grand Strand locations will take part in the birthday celebration, as long as supplies last.

Whether they will last the entire day is yet to be seen, because demand will most certainly be “hot.”