Kieran Healy

Krispy Kraziness

I went into a Krispy Kreme for the first time the other day. Every time I go by the place there’s a long line of cars at the drive-in window, and I’ve heard all about the company’s phenomenal growth rate. I wondered what all the fuss was about. So I went in. “I’ll just buy one doughnut,” I said to myself.

I was lucky to get out alive. The air was full of the sickly smell of warm syrup. You can see the whole production line behind the counter and can watch hundreds of doughnuts moving through the ovens, emerging onto a rolling rack, going through the frosting or glazing machine and finally marching off the end of the line like little warm, sugary lemmings into the waiting mouths of customers. As soon as I was inside the door, the guy behind the counter took a fresh one off the line and handed it to me. The first one’s always free.

As I’d been promised by my friends, the doughnut was good, mainly because it was fresh and hot. I can see their competitive advantage over Dunkin Donuts, which doesn’t bake its doughnuts on site. There isn’t a strong tradition of bakery and pastry shops in the U.S., so I wonder whether Krispy Kreme’s success trades on people’s lack of experience eating freshly-baked goodies.

I stood there, free doughnut in hand, and realized that—just as the marketing guys had intended—the norm of reciprocity and my own greed were conspiring to make me buy a whole box of doughnuts. I was still mesmerized by the fresh ones rolling off the line. The smell of syrup and dough was everywhere. It was appealing and appalling as only fully rationalized capitalism can be.

I heard the voice of Brad DeLong in my ear saying “Do you realize that the doughnut machine there produces more calories in an hour than the whole of 17th-century Britain could in a year?” I sighed, agreed with the phantom Brad, and realized with regret that in net food-consumption terms I was about to take on the role of 17th-century Kent.

Mmmm. Doughnuts.

I don’t think it’s just the fact that the donuts are fresh-baked. There is a pretty good Bay Area chain called Happy Donuts that also makes their donuts on the premises. Happy Donuts does better cake donuts. Krispy Kreme does better raised donuts, mainly because they’re so sweet and buttery.

Just click and enjoy.

Perhaps the most profound statement on doughnuts.

The power of the doughnut.

Wow! A dramatic tale of sugar and dough, starring Brad DeLong as Kieran Healy’s superego. This has off-Broadway potential…

It’s also that, as compared with Krispy Kreme, Dunkin Donuts is SO stingy with the glaze. The first time I had Krispy Kremes they were in boxes at a gas station, not fresh made, and it was still a major revelation.

Mmmm… must try these sometime.

One thing in defense of Dunkin Donuts; baked on site or not depends on the store. Smaller stores or kiosk locations will be owned by the same franchisee who owns a bigger store that makes donuts, and they cart some on over to the smaller locations. They don’t pointedly make them at intervals through the day though, so the donut you buy in the late afternoon might have been made at 4 in the morning. That’s gotta make a difference. Fresh is good.

I’ll second what Jay Solo says.

I worked at the one in my home town for a year and a half or so during high school. The back of the store was the bakery. Baking went on over night and during the morning. No baking during the afternoon or evening shifts. (Baker arrived around 11pm/midnight. iirc).

This store wasn’t open 24 hrs; 24 hour stores might operate differently, especially if they get significant traffic at night. Otherwise, you probably just get what was left over, which we just tossed into the dumpster at midnight.

Fresh munchkins rock.

Gift from the Gods

Kieran Healy just had his first Krispy Kreme experience. Kieran, here’s a warning: once you give into those golden, glazed,

I still don’t understand what all the fuss is about. I’ve always liked Dunkin Donuts much better. Where we live now we don’t have either one within easy driving distance, but we used to get a dozen from Dunkin Donuts every Sunday morning. And by the way, at least some Dunkin Donuts DO make their donuts on site. The one where I used to buy them had a window where you could see them being made.

But the advantage to the ‘one big batch’ method of Dunkin’ Donuts is that, if you walk into one at 2:30 AM (i.e. when the bars close), a nice clerk will sometimes give you entire boxes of free donuts. If it had not been for this, I might have starved to death in college.

Small chemical correction: Kieran writes of the smell of “syrup and dough” everywhere. Sorry, a big part of what’s in the air is the same thing that makes the baguette boulangerie so wonderful in the morning: alcohol.

All those busy little yeasties have been giving their all to turn sugars into two things: carbon dioxide to raise the dough, and alcohol to fill the air and bring on the customers.

-dlj.