A Buckeye Donuts fixture, remembered for kindness
Eric Bretschneider ’07 found home and purpose behind the counter, shaping memories for countless Ohio State students.
It was love at first bite when Eric Bretschneider ’07 arrived on campus and visited Buckeye Donuts.
“He was very interested in the shop,” owner Jimmy Barouxis says. “He liked the vibe. He started asking me questions and asked if he could fill in if someone called off work.”
Bretschneider, 44, who died Nov. 24, would become a member of the family of the family-run business. As a student, he worked part time and then full time, and after graduation, he was eventually named general manager and lived in an apartment above Buckeye Donuts for several years.
He hired, fell in love with and married Madeleine Bray ’23, who replaced him as general manager after his death, following a late-stage cancer diagnosis in June 2025.
“When we started dating [in 2016], I asked why he was still at the shop; he could make more money in computers,” Bray says. “He said he didn’t want to make his hobby, computers, his living. He loved working here, interacting with the people he worked with and the customers.”
Bretschneider was adept at coding, loved to take apart and build computers, and often put these skills to use at Buckeye Donuts.
“We didn’t have a sales-tax program on our cash register when he started here [in 2002],” Barouxis says. “Eric found the manual online, printed it out and programmed it to do sales tax.”
He was also adept at assembling gyros. “He prided himself on how fast he could make one, in like 10 seconds,” Barouxis says.
What initially drew Bray to Bretschneider was their mutual interest in board games. “He was so wicked smart, was kind to everybody and had a great sense of humor,” she says. “When he told a joke, he had a flat affect. At first, you couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking … and then you realized how funny he was.”
That helped make him a customer favorite.
“He was a part of so many people’s Ohio State experience,” Barouxis says. “So often people who had graduated stopped in over the years to say hello to Eric. He impacted so many students with his kindness and sense of humor.”
