I quite like KK donuts (though I haven’t had them for a couple of years). As others have mentioned, the price per donut is quite expensive, though I used to have one of those “buy a dozen donuts, get a dozen free” cards, which brought the price to around $10 a box. It seemed kind of decadent to buy two dozen for just me and my husband, so I used to pick them up whenever we had people over.
A lot of my friends like the Vic Market donuts, but they don’t taste like anything special to me.
I like Krispy Kremes because they are so light and airy, but they are too sweet, and too many calories. We used to get them when we went to pick someone up at the airport. They had a shop there where you could watch them being made and you could sit and have a donut waiting for the plane to come in.
It’s interesting how close this mirrors their failure in Canada. Huge lineups the first while, the nothing.
I haven’t seen their books but I got the sense the problem in Canada was simply that they spent a gazillion dollars overexpanding rather than allowing the market to build. There wasn’t anything so spectacular about their products that they were going to have the customers piling over from Tim Hortons to support millions of dollars in debt.
I’m skeptical of the notion that they failed in Australia, or that Starbucks is failing, because Australians have different taste, somehow. Australians are fat, and are getting fatter every year; the tanned and ripped athletes in the green and gold we see at the Olympics belie the fact that obesity is a growing problem there, so apparently SOMEONE in Sydney is scarfing the sweets. McDonald’s does fine in Australia. Burger King (Hungry Jack’s) does fine there. In a country of some 22 million people, most of them in big cities, you should be able to find enough customers to keep a donut operation going. But going from zero to 50 stores in a few years, especially with what appears to be a short term business plan - they cite high rents as one of the chain’s major problems - was perhaps not wise.
I wish I could go into detail on this, as my capstone paper for my strategy class and my MBA concerned KKDC. We determined whether they are growing or declining, looked at what got them to where they are, and what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. Unfortunately I can’t go into specifics due to confidentiality reasons, but…
I will say this; after interviewing several execs, you’ve hit on one of the problems that have gotten them where they are - expanding too fast. The present exec team is having to deal with the fallout of an earlier regime’s poor decisions. I do think they are taking steps to correct it, but they’ve got a hard road in front of them. I hope they succeed though.
This is precisely what they did in the states. Six years ago they were the hottest thing around. Today you can’t find them.
The idea that Krispy Kreme is expensive is kinda strange to me. I see them everywhere here and have bought a whole box for $5.
But then, I am in the south, the home of Krispy Kreme. The idea that these donuts have actually expanded around the world? Mind blowing.
Yeah, I’ve tried it, but it has a kind of alcoholly taste like vanilla essence, it just doesn’t sit well with me. Starbucks’ chai concentrate is less thick and syrupy and doesn’t have that taste. If I could just get people in the US to send me Oregon Chai it’d be all sorted, but last time someone tried that, the carton burst and all I got in the mail was a chai-scented scrap of cardboard with my address on it … Props to the Posties for delivering it I guess! 
Same thing happened in Massachusetts. Opened to great fanfare, then nothing, then closed. I don’t even think there IS a Krispy Kreme in Massachusetts anymore. There is probably a Tim Horton’s closer to my home than a Krispy Kreme.
This is Dunkin Donuts territory anyway.
Quoted for truth! I have fond memories of growing up in Massachusetts, where you could walk three blocks in any direction and find a Dunkin’ Donuts or two.
It may be that the one area they expanded into where they succeeded, at least moderately, is California. And that’s simply because California had no chains to compete with them. Dunkin Donuts never made it to California, and all the local donut chains died long ago.
When I was in China in May, I had a Krispy Kreme original and a green tea frosting donut. It was surreal - the workers barely spoke English and a few of the toppings were adapted to the local market, but otherwise, it may as well have been N. Carolina.
I remember it was donut madness in Brisbane city the day Krispy Kreme opened but I walk past now and it’s pretty dead. I think the problem isn’t the donuts themselves (which I personally think are amazing) but the fact that they’re so expensive. I’m certain this isn’t a strictly Australian thing but places that sell normal things for abnormal prices don’t seem to do very well here - Starbucks, for example.
Krispy Kreme: Self-loathing, deep-fried and candy-coated.
You’re not supposed to regret it until the third doughnut. What’s the point if the first one makes you sick?
Dunkin Donuts had a strong California presence until the mid-90s. They opened a few stores in 2007, and should now have at least 14 in the LA area, IIRC.
I prefer yeast leavened donuts to cake donuts, but the yeast donuts need to be right out of the fryer. That said, there’s hardly any Krispy Kremes left here in Chicago, either. There used to be a whole bunch about 5-10 years ago, and now they’ve almost all closed down. And it was pretty cheap, in my opinion. I would actually only go in there for a coffee (it was 1/4 block from my house), and when the donuts were fresh, they would always give out free samples. One Krispy Kreme donut is my limit, anyway, so for the price of a large coffee, I’d get a coffee and a donut.
KK pulled out of Arizona, too, and while I won’t say good riddance, I won’t miss them either. Dunkin’ Donuts is still going strong.
I think they are retreating to their roots in the American South where people really, really, like their sweets and fried foods. AFAICT, there are two stores left in Colorado. There were a lot more years ago, but they went away.
What? I’ve never seen a Dunkin Donuts in California, and I can’t find a store location in California on their website. Was it in Southern Cal? I was in L.A. from 1977 to 1984, in the Bay Area since then.
Same here; I can barely get a KK down, they’re so damn sweet.
I just heard Baskin Robbins has also kicked the bucket and will be closing in Australia.