Yes, Virginia, There Is A Krispy Kreme University And It’s In North Carolina.

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Krispy Kreme Mix Plant "Ivy Avenue" Winston-Salem, NC

Don’t worry, this is not going to drag you through a curriculum study of how to manage a Krispy Kreme doughnut store after you’ve attended Krispy Kreme University in Winston-Salem, NC for some serious learnings. It’s more of way to ease you into the Krispy Kreme mix plant that sits where it all began in the 1940’s in that same North Carolina city.

Our franchise group of three partners in Texas, riding the trail under the name Glazing Saddles, believes in doing everything in our power to constantly improve the qualities found in our people, products, physical buildings, and even our trucks to make our customer experience the best to be encountered in any food service business. Glazing Saddles operates eight stores in Texas with two more now under construction to be opening this year. Krispy Kreme corporate are opening things, too, as they’ve just cranked up a new store management school called KKU in Winston-Salem where some very serious store management training is taking place. We are sending our GM’s and AGM’s from Texas to this school and the results have been extremely strong.

The school is great but to me the real education is coming face-to-face with our mix plant on Ivy Avenue in W-S where 10’s of thousands of bags of Krispy Kreme doughnut mix flow through monthly then shipped out to Krispy Kreme stores all over the United States. A couple of months ago we sent our first two GM’s to the school and discovered that the week-long course didn’t include a cross-town field trip to the almost 60 year old mix plant. I called the head of KKU and asked if I could personally take our 2 GM’s out of class on the last day of school for an hour-long tour of the mix plant. The school master was extremely helpful and arranged the whole thing within hours. By the time I arrived at KKU on Friday to pick up our GM’s, all franchisee GM’s in the class had asked if they could go, too. So, we had a crowd going through “Ivy Avenue” as we call the mix plant, and now KKU has made the field trip a part of it’s regular curriculum! Our tour guide that day was none other than the plant manager so we had a super tour!

What makes this story so important is not just how incredible the mix plant is, what’s equally important is that the plant is a very strong and powerful thread in the texture of our heritage. When you see the strung together structure from the outside you can easily detect where it’s been expanded 7 times since opening in 1947. And when you see what happens inside you’ll never again think of a Krispy Kreme doughnut as “just a simple doughnut.” In short, it’s a very complicated thing, our mix plant, and the tedious work that goes into a bag of mix will have you shaking your head in disbelief. For example, a brigade of tanker trucks, each filled with 45,000 pound loads of flour, are lined up on Ivy Avenue every morning to unload. The lab pulls a core sample from every truck to be lab tested to meet our standards before unloading. Fail the test? The truck takes the flour back to its mill.

Well, I said up top that I wasn’t going to drag you through a curriculum study and so to, I’m not going to detail out a trip through our mix plant…it would take a book of blogs to accomplish that anyway. I will say that after you go through the plant and see the quality control – driven by a desire for perfection really – that oversees the making of our mix, that the very next time you bite into a hot glazed, yeast-raised Krispy Kreme doughnut you will know why it tastes the way it does.

And speaking of “bite”, there is even a little machine in our lab that measures the pleasant resistance you experience when you take that bite so that our doughnuts always feel as good as they taste. How ’bout that for details?

See you in class.

Krispy Mike

A Deadly Explosion In West, Texas Brings Out The Best In People During The Worst Possible Time.

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West, Texas Fertilizer Plant Before and After Explosion

On April 17th, just two days after our nation was stunned by the deadly bomb attack by terrorists during the Boston Marathon, another explosion rocked a small town named West, Texas with a devastating blast that leveled a huge fertilizer plant, hundreds of residences, killing 15 and wounding over 200. If you saw on television news the bravery of first responders helping victims in Boston, there was an equal outpouring of first responders in West. Sadly, eleven of the fourteen killed were first responders, firemen who struggled with a massive fire at the plant just before the explosion leveled everything for blocks.

As it is everywhere in our great country the people of Texas descended on West in order to help stabilize the residents with food and clothing and whatever help they needed to begin the road to recovery.

We at Krispy Kreme in Texas were like everyone else, we wanted to do something to ease the pain. We have always sent doughnuts into disaster areas. It’s what we have to offer and we gladly give it. Our doughnuts are not food during times like this, our doughnuts offer a brief break in the suffering by offering a small moment of happiness in an otherwise horrific situation. We have seen smiles of thanks through tears of sadness and on faces dirty and strained from endless hours of hard work.

One of my business partners in our Krispy Kreme franchise in Texas, Krispy Randy, soon rushed into our store #1057 in Austin with just one thing in mind…get Krispy Kremes to West, Texas. At the same moment our quick thinking General Manager, Wagon Wills, was gearing up to get some doughnuts to West. The General Manager’s name is Wagon Wills and on this morning he was on a roll. What happened next was nicely laid out in an email Wagon later sent me describing what happened that day. I will repeat his email here as it’s a solid first person account and also illustrates the effect it had on him as a Krispy Kremer.

Here’s Wagon’s e-mail:

Dear Krispy Mike,

Last Wednesday, April 17th, when I saw the news about the explosion in West, Texas I knew we needed to get involved by the next day. Randy was in the store early that next morning and asked if we had the ability to get product up there to the Red Cross. I assured him we would be there but almost fell backwards when he told me we should deliver 150 dozen! He obviously knew better than I did what I was headed into.

We loaded up 150 dozen and were gone within the hour. I had no idea where I was headed in the town of West but I figured once I was there I’d find out. I stopped at the place where everyone stops when passing through West: Czech Stop, a convenience store specializing in kolaches. As luck was on my side I ran into a gentleman in the parking lot of the store who was coordinating all food response in West for the Red Cross. He is a big Krispy Kreme fan and was truly happy we were there. I waited with him and shuffled some additional donations around to their vans and he then had us follow him to the Red Cross Incident Command Center set up in a church in the center of town.

When we arrived at the command center there were several hundred people in various gatherings; ATF, FBI, EPA and numerous other first responder groups. I immediately understood why I had 150 dozen doughnuts in my van! The media presence was spread throughout the town and into a large auction house parking lot. I don’t recall ever seeing anything quite like it, the mix of local and national news services scattered in every open space and virtually none of them prepared for the Blue Texas Norther that brought the temperatures plummeting 35 degrees from the previous evening and accompanying 30mph breeze. The cold just added to the overwhelming gloom.

As I parked the van, Red Cross help immediately appears and our van gets unloaded faster than I can hand bags of dozens to people. Smiles were on everyone’s faces around the van and I could sense the deep appreciation for bringing our doughnuts to West. Many of the Red Cross volunteers were from the Cen Tex chapter and from the Austin area and knew the doughnuts had made quite a long trip that morning.

I was introduced to the leadership at the command center. I told them we would all pray for them. You could clearly see that they were facing an incredible death toll. No one had been rescued since the sun came up and there were many nearby homes and areas within demolished apartment buildings that they had not been able to gain access to. The perimeter that had been established around the disaster area was so large it was difficult to imagine an explosion of that magnitude. It looked like several blocks long and wide. West is a small town of about 2,800 people and I knew that it would never be the same. But the people are strong here and it will heal, but it will never be the same.

All in all this was my most rewarding day as GM at Krispy Kreme. Us folks at Krispy Kreme all know it’s not “just about the doughnut” and that morning in West, Texas I got to experience firsthand what our company, our franchise, and our stores are all about. I now believe more than ever before that Krispy Kreme is really and truly a whole lot more than doughnuts. A whole lot more!

Wagon Wills,
General Manager
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts/Store #1057
Austin, Texas

“DRIVE FOR 45″ Is Now Wide Open At Our Krispy Kreme Stores In Texas!

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Victory Junction - A Serious Fun Camp

Put Your “Pedal To The Metal” and Check It Out.

When you’re in this mighty fine business that is Krispy Kreme good things happen every time a customer walks in our doors. We have eight stores in Texas, two each in Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso; one in San Marcos, and Laredo. Soon we’ll open a new store in McAllen and a third store in El Paso. Families and friends gather at Krispy Kreme to enjoy a good time in nice settings, served by our delightful employees, with our Hot Original Glazed doughnut as the centerpiece of it all. But there are also other good things that happen in our stores.

As an owner, along with my two partners, Krispy Randy and Krispy Mark, we sincerely derive much joy out of delivering quality doughnuts to our guests but there are times in our business when we encounter something that reminds us in a powerful, emotional way that we really are in the very best business possible. Victory Junction Camp and its annual “Drive For 45″ campaign is at the top of our list of great things we’ve encountered. Like Krispy Kreme, Victory Junction Camp is about family, kids, fun, laughter, happiness, good times and warm memories.

What Is Victory Junction Camp and Drive For 45?

Many of you already know about Victory Junction Camp in North Carolina started by Richard Petty’s son, Kyle, in memory of Kyle’s son Adam who was killed in a freak accident during practice for a NASCAR race several years ago in his car number 45. Adam was a tremendous young driver who at the time of his death was already being talked about as becoming as great or greater champion than his grandfather, Richard. It will never be. But out of tragedy has come something so incredible and so close to one of Adam’s dreams that those who take part in it will be moved in ways they’ve never experienced. Victory Junction Camp was that dream but today it’s real. Adam loved helping kids with medical problems. He wanted them to be able to experience more in life than living in a sheltered environment, not doing what healthy kids do every day – HAVE FUN PLAYING! In memory of Adam, Kyle and his family, with the help in the beginning from Paul Newman who operated Hole In The Wall camps for seriously ill children, created Victory Junction Camp near the Petty homes in Level Cross, North Carolina. At camp, children with chronic medical conditions or serious illnesses come for one entire week for free and go through truly life-changing experiences that they would have otherwise never enjoyed during their lifetime. The kids swim, shoot bow and arrows, swing on ropes, have team games, cookouts, and nearly limitless other activities all designed, programmed and implemented under professional medical and physical supervision of each child in camp throughout their stay.

Krispy Kreme Texas is Going To Camp Right Now In Our Stores.

Maintaining Victory Junction Camp is very expensive and operates solely on donations from across America. It costs $2,500 to send one child to camp for one week. It costs the family of the child absolutely nothing but what they get out of it is, well, priceless. So when you come to our stores in Texas between April 5th and May 19th (45 days) you can donate to the Drive For 45 campaign with all proceeds going directly to Victory Junction Camp. Nationally in the last 4 years Krispy Kreme has raised over $1.3 million for the camp and this year our stores in Texas have set a goal of raising at least $2,500 per store, the cost of sending one child to camp for one week. But don’t tell anyone, because of you we’re going to raise more than that and we’ll tell you about it after the drive is over.

www.victoryjunction.org

Before you come by our Krispy Kremes be sure to check out Victory Junction’s website to see where your donation will go. And when you give to “Drive For 45″ think about the kids you’re helping but also think about the driver of car number 45 and how you’ve helped make his dream come true, too.

See you at the track!

Krispy Mike

What In The World Is Right With Krispy Kreme?

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From growing up in the south in the 1950′s I have known Krispy Kreme doughnuts and have always thought there was not another doughnut that could hold a candle to the great, good taste of the Original Hot Glazed Yeast-Raised Doughnut – a long name for a very simple treat. I never had a problem telling everyone who would listen, especially when I was selling dozen boxes of Krispy Kreme’s during fund raising drives at my school or for the Cub Scouts, that Krispy Kreme doughnuts are better than any other doughnut, probably better than any other candy bar.

It never seemed unnatural to sing the praises of Krispy Kreme until I became an employee of Krispy Kreme in 1994. Everyone in the corporate headquarters in Winston-Salem were happy enough and I could plainly see that there was great pride in our products in every department from “the loading dock to the C suite” which is a line I borrowed from a South-By- South-West (SXSW) video interviewee last week in Austin, Texas, some of which I will share with you in just a few paragraphs from now.

During my early days at corporate I never once (and in the ten years I was there) heard anyone mention any form of competition that our product was facing in the marketplace and I never once heard any bragging or boasting publicly by anyone in the company about how superior our doughnuts were to any other similar products. What I did hear was constant dialogue about how to let our customers do the talking for us as it’s “not our place to say how good our doughnuts are, it wouldn’t be right if we said things like that…” Then they would go further by saying, “our job is to make the best doughnuts we know how to make and serve them in a place that customers will have a good time while enjoying our treats (in fact, I don’t remember anyone calling our doughnuts “products”…too cold a term…’they’re ‘doughnuts’, they’re not “products” they would say).

This was beyond just an humble approach to marketing, which up to 1994 after having spent nearly 23 years in marketing and advertising, I had never known any company not boast about how great their products were and that’s why you should buy them…especially a product as renowned as the Krispy Kreme Hot glazed doughnut.

Krispy Kreme doesn’t advertise, having built the 75 year old high quality doughnut business strictly on word-of-mouth (from the mouths of customers). I soon realized what was going on as the brand began to grow across the country and into foreign countries in the late ’90′s. What was going on was authenticity. Krispy Kreme had never varied from being exactly what it is…a doughnut company that strives for excellence every day but never portrays itself as anything else. This is particularly noteworthy in the politically correct noose our country hangs in today. If Krispy Kreme weren’t Krispy Kreme the company might now be touting about what a great life you would have if you ate our doughnuts; or ‘our’ doughnuts are great for the environment or, great at stamping out world hunger; or our doughnuts will end global warming (if there were such a thing); and so on. Great claims about Krispy Kreme helping you through life would prevail in the media but that is not the case.

Today I’m a partner in, and I will brag a bit, a mighty fine, well-run, happy franchise of Krispy Kreme called Glazing Saddles with 8 stores in Texas, located in Austin, San Marcos, San Antonio, Laredo, El Paso, and soon in McAllen. My two partners, Krispy Randy and Krispy Mark, along with me all believe in the same thing. To make the highest quality doughnuts that we can make and create stores in which our customers can come in and have a treat with family and friends in an environment that is warm and inviting with employees that make the customers know that we want them to be there and have a good time. Whatever it takes. This ‘marketing’ philosophy has nothing to do with our having “drunk the kool aid” from corporate (cause they don’t serve any). You just have to be in the Krispy Kreme business and you’ll get it right from the start. It’s just simply who we are.

Having validation of your way of doing business in today’s over the top advertising/marketing environment can be a pleasant reminder to stay the course. Recently at the always epic SXSW event in Austin where tech, movies, and music command all stages over a 10 day period where usually something big comes out of it, like the introduction of Twitter there about 6 years ago. Among the many video interviews that take place during SXSW, showcasing the famous and infamous and the not yet so famous, much of this screen time can be very enlightening. It was almost endearing to us at Krispy Kreme reviewing the interview with NPR’s Bob Garfield about his new book “Can’t Buy Me – LIKE – How Authentic Customer Connections Drive Superior Results”. In the interview he talks about big fast food companies that advertise in ways to make their brand be something it really isn’t, considering the type food they sell to the masses at price points that are very low. The “fast food happy talk” commercials (social media included) by these industry giants is “hypocritical, it just sounds wrong…it sounds inauthentic because they don’t really mean it…they think they can control both sides of the conversation,” their side and the customer’s side.

Continuing, Mr. Garfield states that “With Krispy Kreme, everything’s different in how they see themselves” (and he’s right). “A Krispy Kreme doughnut is an occasional treat – it’s great! What Krispy Kreme is all about – is making every single thing that they do lead toward their brand purpose which goes something like ‘enhancing everybody’s life through the joy that is Krispy Kreme’ – that’s so fantastic…from the loading dock to the C suite and everywhere in between, they as a company are focused on bringing this joy to every customer…it informs everything they do…they never try to sugar coat (laughs at his pun) what they do with a phony mission statement…they are just about that one, sublime moment when you have their doughnut…Krispy Kreme knows what they’re about as presented in their good values”, according to Mr. Garfield (you can check the video).

I guess the old adage about the best endorsement is a third party endorsement is as true as it’s ever been and while we certainly didn’t ask Mr. Garfield to put all this in his book or his SXSW interview, it’s true to say that we’re real proud he did.

And you’re invited to come by any one of our Texas stores to find out what he was talking about.

Krispy Mike

With our “Cookies and Kreme” Doughnuts You’ll Never Have to “Twist, Lick and Devourer” Your Oreo

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No Twisting Required

I have been deprived. For some reason I never got into the Oreo cookie cult. I never once, that I can remember, twist open an Oreo, eat the filling, then finish with the two chocolate cookie covers. Maybe they were too expensive to buy in our rather humble existence and my mother substituted home made things like lemon pie and roasted marsh mellows (over a stovetop flame!) served after the twice-weekly “cream chipped beef on toast” with an iceberg lettuce and onion salad with Catalina dressing. Whew, that was a country road!

Over a Hundred Years of Twisting

This month marks over 100 years that Oreos have been twisted, licked and devoured, and in what has to be a stroke of coincidence, Krispy Kreme stores all over America, and especially at our stores in Texas, are featuring a “Cookies and Kreme” doughnut offering that will make enjoying your Oreos not only better, but a whole lot less trouble to eat.

Our two featured doughnuts are heavily involved with real Oreo cookie crumbles: Our Cookies and Kreme yeast doughnut is a shell that is filled with Cookies and Kreme filling then topped with dark chocolate icing and an ample topping of real Oreo cookie crumbles. The Cookies and Kreme cake doughnut is a glazed traditional cake doughnut topped with glossy white icing, then dipped with gusto in Oreo cookie crumbles and blessed with a rosette of Cookies and Kreme on the tip top. These two doughnuts are offered in each of our 8 stores – Austin (2), San Marcos, San Antonio (2), Laredo, and El Paso (2) and we guarantee that you won’t have to twist anything to enjoy one of the best taste treats we offer all year…simply, take a bite, and we dare you not to smile. No twist, no lick, just bite.

While Oreo is just over a hundred years old, Krispy Kreme’s no spring chicken at 75 years old. A lot of fun facts came out about us last year to celebrate our birthday so you already know our story. Let’s share a few Oreo facts with you as they’re going to play a key role in our two special Cookies and Kreme doughnuts for a while.

1. The first Oreo was sold in Hoboken, NJ in 1912, the same year the South Pole was discovered and the Titanic slipped beneath the sea.
2. Grocers back then paid .30 cents a pound for the cookies.
3. 50% of all Oreo eaters pull their cookies apart before eating, with women pulling them apart more than men.
4. The Oreo name came from who knows where…many theories abound yet no one knows for sure…one has to do with a Greek mountain…go figure.
5. Oreo is the world’s favorite cookie with annual sales exceeding $1.5 billion worldwide.
6. Kraft Foods is the maker and keeper of the Oreo brand and makes the cookies in 21 bakeries around the world.
7. Oreo cookies are now sold in 100 countries…

…but the best country they’re sold in is Texas…as toppings and fillers on our Cookies and Kreme doughnuts at each of our eight Krispy Kreme stores across the Lone Star state.

Come see us. No twisting required.

Krispy Mike

Elvis Sat Right There And Ate Raspberry Filled Krispy Kreme Doughnuts…In The Krispy Kreme Store In Memphis!

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Elvis with his favorite doughnut....the Krispy Kreme Raspberry Filled doughnut!

A lot of people have Elvis Presley stories and I have a few of my own. In the late ‘50’s when he was just starting his musical journey and “Heartbreak Hotel” was newly released and running up the charts to be number one, a local radio station “sponsored” a performance by Elvis at
the dilapidated National Theater in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. I was a teenager at that time and was living in Greensboro and somehow managed a ticket to the show. I had his record on 78 and 45 (don’t know what that is, time to Google) and had seen him on the Ed Sullivan Show (Google again, youngsters) so I walked downtown to see him at the “National”. I stopped at the new Krispy Kreme on Greene Street and had some glazed doughnuts and milk, then walked a block to the theater. I had never seen screaming chaos as I witnessed that afternoon…mostly teenage girls, a few of us boys and once inside the theater the screaming never stopped from the time Elvis came on stage until he left the building. I honestly can’t say that I remember hearing any of Elvis’ songs in the high-pitched din enveloping that theater.

What’s any of this got to do with our eight Krispy Kreme stores in Texas (Austin, San Marcos, San Antonio, Laredo, El Paso)? Nothing really except that when looking over the complete remodels of our El Paso stores recently I was reminded of something that happened years ago at the Krispy Kreme store on Elvis Presley Blvd in Memphis. Legend has it, and I believe it’s true, that Elvis loved Raspberry filled Krispy Kreme doughnuts which he could eat by the dozens. At the remodel in El Paso while looking at the new tile floor going into the production area the Memphis memory came in loud and clear.

I was head of marketing for Krispy Kreme Corporate at the time and had traveled to Memphis to produce a documentary on one of our route drivers, a very nice lady whose name I can’t recall. After shooting several scenes around the city we stopped at the Krispy Kreme store on EP Blvd for some doughnuts and coffee. It was mid-afternoon yet the place was mobbed, which was unusual for that time of day. Turns out it was January 8th and it was Elvis’ birthday and people literally from all over the world were there, like they are every year to celebrate and mourn all at the same time – tears of joy and sadness pulling out a variety of emotions. Cameras were clicking and the crowd was pushed in around the old “coffee bar”, focusing on one of the single post swivel stools that ran the length of the “bar”.

With such a crowd, we decided to just grab and go and when I spoke to the manager I asked him what was all the crunch to take pictures at the coffee bar. One of the stools that seemed to be the target of picture snappers was in the middle of the length of the bar and it was the only stool that had no seat! It was just a chrome pole jutting out of the tile floor, the only one with no vinyl covered stool seat. That was where all the attention was focused and I guess seeing the partially installed tile floor in our El Paso store reminded me of the tile floor in the Memphis store – it’s floor in very dire need to be replaced. The manager told me that a rumor had started years ago about that particular stool and the story was that’s the very stool Elvis sat on when he came for his raspberry-filled. I asked why was there no seat on the stool pole and here’s what he said, “People keep stealing it because Elvis sat on it.” This was the third time it had happened and this time, he said, he decided not to ever replace it again.

Pretty good story, don’t you think? Well the end of the story is even better. With all the tourists shooting pics of Elvis’ seat, none of them realized that the Krispy Kreme store on Elvis Presley Blvd. in Memphis, Tennessee was built years after Elvis died, so not only did he not sit there, he never even got the chance to walk through the door.

The morale to the story…always check before you snap.

Come see us in Texas,

Krispy Mike

The Handwriting’s Not On The Wall.

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I Love You!

It Will Soon Not Even Be
On Your Valentine Cards.

Valentine’s is one of the best days of the year to tell someone you love, that “I Love You!” And when you write it on a Valentine’s card in your own hand and give it to that special someone then there’s more on the card than just words – it’s a personal expression of you that is reflected in the cursive letters you spelled out. Of course when you combine the card with Valentine Doughnuts from any one of our eight Krispy Kreme stores in Texas, then you’ve really sealed the deal, as some might say. With Krispy Kreme stores in Austin, San Marcos, San Antonio, Laredo, and El Paso, this is a festive time to visit our stores and pick up dozens of our specially designed doughnuts prepared in the spirit of St. Valentine’s Day.

But cursive is what I want to bring to the heart-shaped table we now sit around up through February 14th. Depending on your age you may have had long training sessions in grammar school and even in middle school where you learned the fine art of writing in a script called cursive. Some of my schoolmates from long ago called writing in cursive “real writing” and it wasn’t an easy thing to master without days or even years of practice until your penmanship eventually became part of who you are. I like to write in cursive, although my cursive has become a somewhat sloppy blend of “real writing” and printing. I enjoy writing on paper with a pen or good mechanical pencil and at times I’ll handwrite my Krispy Mike blog and then, of course have to key it into the computer for publication, editing as I go along.

This past week I read a piece in the newspaper that as of the first of the year, 2013, teaching handwriting to school kids will no longer be done in possibly up to 45 states and that instead, by fourth grade all children must be proficient in keying a computer keyboard. So the handwriting will not be on the wall, it’ll be on a computer screen and it won’t be handwriting at all. It will be words written by a repetitive action with no tactile experience whatsoever.

I was saddened by this information because it will likely mean that kids will grow up and not even be able to read the Declaration of Independence, or the Christmas cards from the grandparents, or that handwritten recipe handed down through the family from Aunt Lucy. Please understand that Krispy Mike is not against change over time but I, along with my two Krispy Kreme Texas franchise partners, Krispy Randy and Krispy Mark, happen to be in a very nice business of making and selling Krispy Kreme original hot glazed yeast raised doughnuts made from a recipe dating back over 75 years. We make other varieties as well along with our hand-made kolaches but the finer point is that, from “taste-witnesses” who actually ate our original glazed doughnuts back in 1937 swear they taste the same in 2013 as they did then (note a blog I just recently wrote on this). When you have a doughnut like that, and our customers say they love it, then why change it to something else?

I think about some ancient, thousands of years ago, carving with a pointed rock the image of a deer onto the wall of a cave. It was done by hand and expressed feelings held by the “artist” that to this day are still being talked about. I’m sure writing in cursive by hand will not go the way of the quill pen or the caveman’s pointed rock, but I do know that it’s going out of our schools and that’s one change I’m not sure about at all – even if the kids don’t care about or understand writing something special by hand on a piece of paper and giving it or mailing it to someone special, they’re going to miss that certain feeling you have when you write in ‘real writing’ on a Valentine’s card:

Be My Valentine,
Love,
Krispy Mike

“From Your Valentine” Is The Quote That Started It All

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Krispy Kreme Doughnuts are Cupid approved!

What’s shaped like a heart, so good that people fall in love with it, and though it only shows up just once a year, it’s so much fun to share that it sells by the dozens? Well since this a Krispy Mike blog and I derive my name from our Krispy Kreme franchise in Texas, then you’ve probably only had to burn through very few brain cells to determine that the heart-shaped mystery is a Krispy Kreme Valentine doughnut. Now I don’t want to start any rumors but there’s a rumor that when you give a dozen Krispy Kreme Valentine’s doughnuts to someone you really care about that their heart will be pierced with love that will last forever.

I don’t really ascribe to that because as a good Texan from North Carolina I know that the only hunter darting around in the wilderness of love is a fat little cherubed-up boy with wings and a bow and arrow who flies in every year at this time to place romance into the hearts of hapless victims who had previously been looking for love in all the wrong places. The little boy’s name is Cupid and he comes from the myths of ancient Rome or Greece, depending on your persuasion, and in the process of evolving over eons of time he somehow managed to become a symbol tied directly to our annual celebrations of Saint Valentine’s Day. The accuracy of Cupid’s arrow would leave my wingshooting business partner, Krispy Mark, so jealous that he might even give up the sport entirely. My other business partner, Krispy Randy, also a happy exile from North Carolina, is probably less interested in Cupid than in how Valentine’s Day got invented in the first place. That’s kind of the camp I’m in.

The bottom line is, like all things old and lasting, somewhere back in the olden days something got said or done that just struck the fancy of generations and generations of storytellers who just kept it rolling. With Saint Valentine’s Day what kicked it off was three words written by an actual real Saint who was soon to be executed, and those words were “from your Valentine.” This was the closing in a letter from Saint Valentine to the daughter of his jailer during the time of the Roman Empire. It is a known fact that Saint Valentine was imprisoned for performing weddings for Roman soldiers who were forbidden to marry. I guess it was kind of his way of perpetuating the love notion and for that he lost his head even though he had healed a sickness in the jailer’s daughter which I suppose wasn’t enough to keep Saint Valentine in tact. The “from your Valentine” stuck in the hearts and heads of all people with good or romantic intentions and it evolved from it’s religious beginnings back during those ancient Roman times into the more common popular version “Be My Valentine” that we know and love today.

I find all this fascinating but I don’t know that telling it in my blog will get me more readers. One thing I do know, however, is that every time you come into one of our eight Krispy Kreme stores in Texas (Austin, San Marcos, San Antonio, Laredo, and El Paso) and pick up some boxes of our Valentine’s doughnuts for someone you really care about, I don’t know if Cupid’s arrow might get involved but I do have a feeling that good old Saint Valentine would approve of your thoughtful gesture.

With love in the air and wind in my hair, I remain your glazing servant,

Krispy Mike

Why A Krispy Kreme Doughnut Isn’t Simple.

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Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Doughnuts

As I sit here in Austin at the “World Wide International Headquarters of Glazing Saddles”, our Texas Krispy Kreme franchise group, I am reminded that we are one of the hundreds of thousands of small companies operating in a big country with our focus on plying our trade in the doughnut business. With a collection of eight stores in our franchise; Austin (2), San Marcos, San Antonio (2) Laredo, and El Paso (2) we certainly can’t call ourselves world wide or international as I jokingly did above. But with all the never-ending, incessant political bantering about the fiscal cliff, debt ceiling, middle class, tax the rich, etc., it’s easy to lose sight of what we as a small business contributes to the greatness of America. We’ve created hundreds of very good jobs and stirred up doughnuts that hundreds of thousands of customers enjoy every year. Our business won’t make Congress have a better than its current miserable 9% approval rating, but it will enable our employees to enjoy the benefits of a good, secure job and our customers the benefit of a repeatable, enjoyable experience of a simple treat.

Simple treat? Is a Hot glazed original Krispy Kreme Doughnut right off the line really “simple?” I’ve heard it uttered countless times that a Krispy Kreme doughnut is such a “simple” product, or “What could be more simple than a Krispy Kreme doughnut?” Or “Wow, this hot doughnut tastes incredible yet it’s so simple!”

The use of the word “simple” as it pertains to our products has always made me feel a little uncomfortable, probably because of how complex our doughnut-making process really is…look though the production window sometime and you’ll see a lot of people working and a lot of complicated things going on as the doughnuts come down the line. But that’s about “making” the doughnut, not about the doughnut itself.

Today, while reading about the man who originally put the “i” in “iMac” back in the 90′s, I finally received an answer to my feelings of discomfort when I hear our product described as “simple.” The man’s name is Ken Segall and back in the first days of iMac when he worked for Apple, he presented the name ‘iMac’ to Steve Jobs who at first rejected it. What was the reason for the “i?” Mr. Segall points out in a recent speech that at that time getting connected to the internet was often a daunting task and trying to get online was technically difficult and at times, impossible. Using the iMac name he felt, would make the user more at home with being a part of “his” internet as in, “it’s my internet, connected directly to my iMac.” iMac will help me make it to the www.

Interesting story about an iconic name. But for me, not the end of story. What Mr. Segall said next during his speech was that when it comes to Apple products which offer blessed ‘simplicity’ to the user, “Simplicity is not about dumbing things down, it’s about making things more elegant.” There’s my answer! Krispy Kreme doughnuts are not dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, they are elegant products created to achieve the highest level of quality and satisfaction to provide our customers with the best taste treat indulgence we can possibly offer. If we dumbed down the ingredients and production processes we go through in order to “make it a simple product” then we wouldn’t have a Krispy Kreme doughnut anymore, we’d have something far less. I do believe our products are elegant, not simple. And I’ll keep Mr. Segall’s brilliant comment forever at the top of my slightly glazed mind.

As far as “dumbing down” is concerned, simply look at the US Congresses 9% approval rating as an example of how far down “dumbing down” can take you.

With not an air of political correctness about our country’s political condition, I remain,

Sincerely yours,

Krispy Mike

Remembering Uncle Nub and Dick Clark. Some Thoughts on “Real Writing”. Stupid New Year’s Resolutions.

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Dick Clark

Today this blog is my bin of remembered things, a small catch-all at a catch-up time of the year. Around the holidays, especially with the tick-tocking into our New Year, I remember things and people I may have forgotten and forget people and things I should have remembered.

Uncle Nub At Christmas.
I certainly remember my favorite uncle, Uncle Nub, who died this past April at age 94. He lived close by and I saw him for lunch every week and called him every night. Around this Christmas I must have reached for the phone to ring him up at least 10 times. I guess I really won’t miss him that much as he is always in my thoughts so he’ll always be around, just not in the way I’d like him to be. He taught me a lot and he could never get enough stories out of me about my involvement in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. He was proud that I, along with my two partners, own and operate eight Krispy Kreme stores in Texas. I was always even prouder that he owned and operated one service station in Burlington, North Carolina for 40 successful years. He could fill your tank, wash your windshield and make your car sing like a Robin with his wrenches.

Dick Clark At New Year’s Eve.
And speaking of Krispy Kreme, it led me to meet another very fine man who also died this past April – Dick Clark. New Year’s Eve of course will not be the same without him and this year millions will miss him, too. I met Dick in Los Angeles several years ago on stage 27 at Sony Studios, which used to be MGM studios. Dick was producing the Donnie and Marie Show (along with nearly everything else that was being produced in the television industry at that time) and I was there in my product placement role with a small crew of Krispy Kreme technicians to install a souped-up Krispy Kreme doughnut conveyor on the set which would be used in a skit with Donnie and Marie recreating the infamous “I Love Lucy Chocolate Factory” bit from back in the ‘50’s. If you aren’t familiar with that show, ask a baby boomer and you’ll quickly find out what a classic it was and still is. Our recreation was a hit as well.

A Life Lesson From Dick Clark.
When I first met Dick he was in high pre-production mode on the sound stage darting here and there with the controlled chaos of set decoration and lighting going at full tilt everywhere you looked. What happened next was a surprise. Dick turned and saw me, I had on a t-shirt with a big Krispy Kreme logo on it, and he came right over and said, “Hello Krispy Kreme guy, I’m Dick Clark.” As if I didn’t know. Beyond humble. From that moment and for years following I can say that Dick, for all his fame and fortune, was one of the most down-to-earth people I have ever met. (He later became a Krispy Kreme franchisee in the UK and attended Krispy Kreme Franchise conferences just like all the rest of us). What I said to him at that first meeting came out of my mouth before I even thought about it, I said with enthusiasm, “Dick Clark! I’ve been wanting to ask you a question for a long time – what would it take to have a Krispy Kreme Doughnut come down that pole on New Year’s Eve instead of that out-of-place crystal ball?” He roared with laughter and a friendship was struck. He showed me over time by example, celebrities should never forget, that but for fate and timing, they could have followed a different path and just as easily have run a service station in Burlington, North Carolina for 40 years. And Dick felt if they had done that successfully they would still be a star – in someone’s eyes. Something to remember.

Write Right Soon.
At this meaningful time of year I’d like to pass on a couple of New Year’s resolution-type things. The first is a funny one I read this morning in the Wall Street Journal, which said, “Why is it that only smokers and overweight people get to make New Year’s Resolutions?” Another thought worth remembering in the same paper (since you’re reading this blog through the dubious channels of social media), is ‘how many Christmas Cards did you actually write or receive this year? Not “Merry Christmas” emails or tweets, or some skype hookup…did you take a pen in your hand and write something to someone you care about? You know, actual ‘real writing.’ Not so much, uh. Well I believe a rock-solid resolution for you and me and all mankind itself for this year would be to actually write something to someone with a pen and paper and mail it or give it to them. Real, physical handwritten communication should not go away because when you write something with a pen or pencil on paper it is much more powerful than a back-lit email because “you” are part of that writing…your personality is there in your own hand. Think of some old letters written by your grandparents that you treasure and have locked away for safe-keeping. Or that famous family recipe hand-written by your aunt on a piece of notebook paper in 1943. How many emails will you treasure in 20 years? Don’t want to preach here, but just think about it and write a note on paper with a pen, even if it’s a thought to yourself about your favorite uncle or a down-to-earth celebrity you were lucky enough to have met one day. Or anything. Just make it yours. You won’t even have to click on it to read it.

Krispy Kreme Is Not A Resolution, It’s A Doughnut.
Just one more thing on New Year’s Resolutions for this year – Don’t make a resolution to go the gym and get in shape and then not enjoy Krispy Kreme Doughnuts because they have sugar in them. Of course they have sugar in them, they’re doughnuts for goodness sake. And you don’t have to sit there and eat a whole dozen, you know. The simple reason for having a Krispy Kreme doughnut is they’re a satisfying treat that makes you happy…and everyone knows that one of the main components of good health is “happiness”. Right? I sure get it as I can personally attest to having seen hundreds, no, make that thousands of our customers smile and laugh when they enjoy our doughnuts – Hot Original Glazed and all the rest. So, when you finish with all that New Year’s Resolution pain of pumping iron and self-induced starvation, come by one of our stores in Austin (2), San Marcos, San Antonio (2), Laredo, and El Paso (2) and have a doughnut and coffee. As Uncle Nub would say, “It’ll do you good and help you, too.” The best part is you’ll see the pain and growling stomach go away faster than you can say “Twenty-Thirteen.”

Krispy Mike

PS – Yes I first wrote this blog out by hand but I didn’t have all your addresses so I had to resort to sending it this way. Wuda ya gonna do, ya know?! If you want the handwritten version send me a SASE and I’ll get it to you. km