Monthly Archives: February 2012

New Store Openings, Coming Soon, And An Old One I’ll Never Forget

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Recent comments by Jim Morgan, CEO, Krispy Kreme Corporate, and Ken May, President, Krispy Kreme Corporate, indicate that new store openings for Krispy Kreme in the United States may double the size of existing stores over the next five years. This is founded, strategically, on a smaller store built around innovative new smaller equipment to produce a full line of our doughnut products including, of course, our signature Original Yeast Raised Hot Doughnut.

While thinking about new store openings in the future I began to reminisce about new store openings in the past. From 1994 through 2004 which was my time as head of and sometimes not head of, but always in the marketing department, there were a lot of new store openings and one of my responsibilities was to get them to open BIG. With the growing “celebrity” of the Krispy Kreme brand through product placement and national PR, opening “Big” was not a stretch, at least with the first new store in a new market…after that, don’t bet the farm on the next opening in that same market.

One of the most satisfying things I’ve done with Krispy Kreme is opening new stores. Standing at the 180 curve and handing out Hot Glazed Doughnuts right off the line to customers, the majority of which had never even smelled a Hot Original Glazed before, was an experience that I could never get enough of. Just seeing the almost bewilderment at that first bite and the smiles and usually laughter following those first nibbles is forever glazed into my brain. A truly amazing experience for them and for me seeing it happen hundreds, even thousands of times at all the openings I attended around the country.

Does Everyone Smile and Laugh
At A New Store Opening?

The most memorable Krispy Kreme new store opening for Krispy Mike happened about 11 years ago in the august city of very healthy people, Austin, Texas (Austin was just recognized as the healthiest city in America – I guess by a stacked panel of very healthy judges). The store happened to be the first-ever store opened by Glazing Saddles in Texas and I can tell you now that I was a little more nervous about this one as I had ever been about all those other stores we helped open for other franchisees. When it’s your dollars and future on the line the perspective changes somewhat from “Isn’t this nice and fun,” to “If this doesn’t work, we don’t work!” But, the customers arrived and arrived and arrived and we experienced one of the biggest openings in Krispy Kreme’s history. A little over a year or so later we nearly doubled the size of the Austin opening when we opened our first store in San Antonio, which is one of our strongest stores in Glazing Saddles land today.

Lemme get back to grand opening smiles. In Austin, during the first awakening moments of the opening we had a several blocks long line at the drive-thru and a happy, energetic line out the door at retail stretching somewhere way down the street and out of sight. I was handing out a hot doughnut to each person as they came through the line and often it was a couple of people who had had Krispy Kreme before bringing with them a friend or two who hadn’t. Then we’d all watch when the newbie’s took their first bites and exploded into this laughing/rapture-like emotion, some even jumping up and down and sometimes sideways over the taste experience. It was over-the-tippy-top party time and there wasn’t an adult beverage anywhere in sight! It was all fueled by what was Hot!

WAIT?! There’s A Guy In Line Frowning!

Feeling the joy of what was happening with the doughnuts and the joy of sales cranking up big time against those foreboding bank loans, I suddenly saw what seemed like an out of context apparition. About ten people back in the happy line was an older gentlemen who looked like he was standing in an unemployment line on the last day of his unemployment pay. His hair was a little rumpled and his shirt was a wool red plaid and his head was down and his hands were stuffed in his pockets as he shuffled forward. I had never seen this type of expression of unhappiness in a customer coming into a Krispy Kreme grand opening celebration. In fact I’ve never seen it since. As he approached me his expression didn’t change (I have a way of doing that to people so it didn’t bother me too much) and when I held out a hot Krispy Kreme and said, “Have you ever had a Hot Krispy Kreme doughnut before?” he looked me sternly in the eye and said, “I grew up on Krispy Kremes, I’m from Baton Rouge and was transferred here 30 years ago and haven’t had one since.” And I said, “Try this one, it’s going to taste the same as the last one you had in Baton Rouge (I was cheating a bit because I knew Krispy Kreme had a lab in the mix plant back in Winston Salem that made sure that the taste and texture of our Hot Original Glazed doughnut never varies, no matter what).” He answered by saying, “I doubt it’ll even be close”, and he took the doughnut, bit into it, paused and slowly nodded his head slightly up and down and when he looked me in the eye again, he was crying! Real tears streaming down his cheeks, unashamed emotion. He never said another word as he continued to nod his head in some odd positive affirmation, and he walked away from me and I never saw him again. But I knew one thing. That Krispy Kreme doughnut taste took that old man to a place he hadn’t been to in a long, long time. It was a memory about his parents, his kids, an early girlfriend, his grandmother…I didn’t know what nearly forgotten feeling had brought tears to his eyes but I knew one thing for sure. A Krispy Kreme doughnut had made this man smile with his tears, just another special way this very special product can fill part of your everyday life with true joy.

Wow, speaking of joy, I enjoyed writing this. First time I’ve ever written it down. I didn’t even produce my own tears as I usually do when tell the story to someone face-to-face. I suppose writing is less emotional somehow, although I really did feel emotion while describing the part about the old man. If we ever bump into each another, I’ll tell you the old man story straight out in my own words and then we can have a good cry, a Hot Krispy Kreme, and wash it all down with a cold bottle of milk. How’s that sound?

Here’s smilin’ at ya from a better trail of tears…

Krispy Mike

What Do You Give A Krispy Kreme Doughnut For Valentine’s Day?

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Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Doughnuts

Krispy Kreme Original Glazed Doughnuts

Sweeties and lovers and husbands and wives and old acquaintances and new ones and kids and teens and just about every sentimental person in Texas and all over America celebrate Valentine’s by giving everything from Roses to Krispy Kreme heart-shaped doughnuts to the one they care about on this ever-romantic day. Our stores in the Glazing Saddles (our franchise name in Texas) world from Laredo to El Paso, through Austin, San Marcos and San Antonio love this time of year and our Valentine’s doughnuts reflect it. Giving Krispy Kreme doughnuts to someone you care about is nothing new, but it gains a bit of love-fired momentum during early February.

So, a simple question arises: If you give Krispy Kreme doughnuts to someone you care about and you also care about Krispy Kreme doughnuts, what then do you give a Krispy Kreme Doughnut for Valentine’s? Krispy Mike has the answer. You give your favorite Krispy Kreme doughnut a day in a world class spa, that’s what. I’ve actually done just that and witnessed and paid well for the results. Stay with me on this because you’re not being set up.

While serving my time as head of marketing at corporate Krispy Kreme Doughnuts during the years between 1994 and 2004, there were good times and bad, fun times and tears, entrepreneurial highs stirred in with some headline making lows but there was always fun in the air as it is today with a great corporate team in place making positive decisions about the future of this very old company. Sound like I’m sucking up? I guess I am in a way, trying to be a rah-rah franchisee, but time will tell, as it always has with this venerable company, as to who will rise and who will fall…not unlike any other great company in America. How does this digression relate to doughnuts and spas and Valentine’s? It relates because of something that happened during my tenure at corporate that bears repeating at this heart-throbbing time of year.

A Short Music Video Goes A Long Way

When I worked at corporate Krispy Kreme I was able to enjoy the experiences of my previous business life where a part of my work was shooting commercials, documentaries, and various other film projects for some of the giants of industry and a few little guys as well. Krispy Kreme always wanted to tell it’s story in video and when I arrived things like video tape got to rolling. We shot a lot during my ten years but the most fun and challenging projects were producing complete music videos of everything that happened during an annual company wide convention. The videos were shot at the location of the convention; they included EVERY person attending and EVERY event, and were produced using 4-5 videographers running all over the place and bringing the raw footage back to me where I was holed up for 4 days in a makeshift editing room with a fellow named Tripp who manned the edit console and pushed buttons as we raced through 12-15 hours of tape and ended with a 9-12 minute completed video which was then shown at the banquet on the final night of the convention. It usually took me a week to get over it – no sleep permitted during the whole edit, except for catnaps on a couch – but the results were always stunning because of the bonding among the attendees at witnessing themselves in meetings and golfing, in serious discussions and laughter, walking down 5th Avenue in New York or watching the sun set over some blue-green crystal clear ocean in the late afternoon at someplace special – these meetings brought the company together like nothing I’ve seen in other corporate settings and the videos always capped the ending and sealed the deal.

Going To The Boulders Is Not Like Becoming A Cowboy

It was at one of these meetings that I got to send an original, glazed Krispy Kreme doughnut to a spa. The meeting was at a wonderful place called The Boulders in Carefree, Arizona. The Boulders featured incredible accommodations, uncompromised meeting facilities, and grounds so beautiful you’d get a lump in your throat just staring at the boulders and Saguaro cactuses and the low-lying vegetation that somehow survives the 115 degree desert heat. When shooting the videos during the conventions we were always seeking to involve some outstanding characteristic offered up by the resort. In The Boulders case, golf was nothing compared with the world-class spa on site in the main building. The guest rooms at The Boulders are all small adobe buildings scattered about the property and looking like something out of an old western movie. So when I say ‘main building’ I’m speaking of the place where all the meetings, shopping and spa activities take place. Someone, and I think it unfortunately was me, had the fantasy idea that “wouldn’t it be cool if we sent a Krispy Kreme doughnut though a complete spa treatment, video the whole thing, and include it in the music video to be shown on the last night of the convention!” There you go. A meeting with the spa officials brought surprise and laughter and they thought it was the greatest idea they’d heard since the spa opened. So, we did it. Through steam and showers and rub-downs and light exercise and hot towels and manicures and pedicures went our Original Yeast Raised Glazed doughnut looking better with each passing treatment. It was actually hilarious behind the scenes and I’ll confess that it took quite a few “stand-in” doughnuts to finish the whole program even though the finished segment looked like there was only one (showbiz). When done our happy doughnut was as relaxed as a cat while sitting on some kind of red velvet piece of cloth in the last scene. Fantastic! We said our goodbyes to the spa gang and went on about our work with a deadline looming, as always.

It Can Be Expensive When You Give A Valentine’s Present To A Doughnut

The finished video went on to be a hit and the scenes of our doughnut in the spa warranted enough shouts of “Encore!” at the end that we had to show the video twice. What a nice reward for everyone who helped make it happen. But wait, there’s a bit more to this story and I never heard the end of it until I left corporate to become a franchisee out here in Texas. About a month after the meeting at The Boulders I was sitting in my office back at corporate. I had just replayed the video from the meeting and was reveling a tad at how good it really turned out. My mood changed without notice when in walked a high up numbers type executive who was reviewing the charges for our meeting from The Boulders. She was half smiling and half frowning in that same condescending way an IRS agent has when he’s about to the slap the cuffs on you. “I have a charge here that I can’t figure out and since it had ref: kk mkt dept on it I thought you might be able to help me out – heh-heh,” without a smile now. Continuing, with increasing animation she quivered out the next sentence, “It’s for a full spa treatment of a Krispy Kreme ‘product’ and the charge is $1,500 plus $500 for special Red Velvet set up. WHAT IS THIS!?”
she nearly screamed and it was obvious that she hadn’t seen the video cause she wasn’t at the meeting. I was more visibly shaken than she was in that I had jokingly asked the spa people at the time what they’d charge me for sending the doughnut through and they laughed and said, “You gotta be kidding, this will be for fun!” That was a relief to me as these videos were done on a relative shoestring budget and any charge would have ended the idea right there. So in the next few minutes I made a clumsy attempt to calm Miss Numbers’ approaching rage by showing her the video with the doughnut spa scene that I replayed several times for clarity. This only made it worse. I soon found out that accountants, other than my partner, Krispy Mark, our CFO at Glazing Saddles, have extremely low tolerance for sending a doughnut out for a pedicure, as she audibly huffed, then turning with a jerk, down the hallway she bound, dropping some papers as she went. Bad sport.

Epilogue

I know I stretched it a bit by tying Valentine’s Day in with the story because the spa incident happened a month or two after the February celebration. But I didn’t think you’d mind because it proffered you a piece of good advice for Valentine’s: Give what you can afford and what will make your sweetie happy, even if it’s a simple kiss.

Moral: It’s far better to give from the heart than to receive an invoice from The Boulders.

Happy Valentine’s. See you at the spa!

Krispy Mike

PS: Today’s more frugal and practical corporate Krispy Kreme leadership holds annual meetings at places close to their Winston-Salem headquarters with hardly a spa in sight, unless you call that pulsing Delta showerhead in your guestroom a spa. Have to dream, though, the Caribbean looks pretty nice right now…km

MY very first Valentine Card. THE very first Valentine Card.

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Krispy Kreme Valentine Doughnut Arrangement

The Perfect Arrangement

MY FIRST VALENTINE CARD

With St. Valentine’s Day pulsing its way rapidly into everyone’s heart strings, I sit in an undisclosed location in one of our Krispy Kreme stores in Texas watching many delighted customers rushing in empty-handed and rushing out with clear plastic bags filled with dozens of our “Valentine Hearts” doughnuts, obviously headed to make somebody out there pretty happy. Our Sprinkled Heart doughnut is a heart shaped delicacy with white icing and red, white and pink sprinkles never to be confused with our Heart shaped Kreme filled doughnut topped with chocolate icing and red drizzle, and then there’s our ‘excellence-in-simplicity’ ring doughnut with chocolate icing and Valentine’s Day sprinkles. As I watch the scurrying employees and customers having a fine time I recalled the first Valentine’s card I ever received. Think about it, can you remember your first Valentine card. I’ve heard so many “When I had my first Krispy Kreme” stories now over the decades that I know, like me, nearly everyone remembers their first Krispy Kreme. But your first Valentine’s card!? I don’t know who may remember that one.

Your first Valentine’s card … think back to your childhood for the answer, if that’s where it’s hiding for you in memory as it is for me. My first Valentine’s card was delivered to me in about the second grade when our tiny class was writing and exchanging heart-felt cards under the supple guidance of Ms. Gardner, our teacher. We were all given a selection of one-sided cards usually designed with a big, die-cut heart as the main star then featuring cupids and bunnies and flowers and stuff like that scattered about the heart. The back of the cards were blank allowing us space to write love messages to each other in class…”if you really like someone a lot” as Ms. Gardner would instruct, her hair up in a tall bun on top of her head and a heart pin on her lapel. She continued…”and of course at Valentine’s Day we especially like each other a lot, now don’t we…” “Yes, Ms. Gardner, we sure do,” we replied.

Well, everyone was writing their secret messages with thick-leaded pencils (I go back pretty far, as you’ve figured by now) when suddenly a girl in a blue and white plaid dress got up from her desk just as Ms. Gardner ordered in her mannerly way, “…time to share your cards now, children…” The girl had blond hair with two pigtails tied with rubber bands, I believe, and came right over to my desk as I continued to struggle with penmanship. She quickly laid a Valentine’s card on my desk, face up, then flew back to her desk without so much as a word. I think I was embarrassed although the thick fuzz of time covers much of what emotion I might have felt at that moment but what was written on the card is something I’ve never forgotten. It stated, in neat blockish print letters: Miek, you are cuit. Laura. How could you ever forget a message like that? I kept that card into my late teens where it finally vanished as my room was cleaned out when I was swept away to higher learning at Chowan College in Murfreesboro, NC. Well it wasn’t that much “higher” a learning but it was certainly higher for me. Also, I never remember talking to ‘Laura’ or even seeing her again. Alas.

THE VERY FIRST VALENTINE CARD

Share this next part, if you would be so kind, with the fine General Managers of our stores in Laredo, Austin (2), San Marcos, San Antonio (2) and El Paso (2), because we want them better informed about the rich history of St. Valentine’s Day and why we send cards, give presents and roses and doughnuts, and gifts of all kinds around February 14th, Valentine’s Day. They won’t listen to me when I try to inform them on the history of this important celebration but they will listen to you because you’re a customer and that goes a long way in making them listen. Your donation of sharing this story will build precision wisdom in their minds and better prepare them when a customer asks, “Where did Valentine’s Day start and when did the first Valentine’s Day card get sent.” People ask me this every day so I know our GM’s get hit with it. Clarification: Almost every day.

If you think Valentine’s Day is a big heart-shaped retail deal, you’re right. In the United States alone around fourteen BILLION dollars is spent celebrating the “Be My Valentine” mantra each year and shows no signs of slowing down…Love-Be-In-Da-Air for sure! But if you think Valentine’s Day was invented in this country you’d be right and wrong. The special day was popularized in the US over the past century but in no way did it start here (OK, I know, popularized means commercialized, but hey, this is America). This “Day” thing goes way, way back. Try February 14, 269 AD in Rome to pinpoint the first “Valentine’s Day”! Back in those times things were just a tad bit different than they are today what with all the pagan love feasts and that big blow-out week-long celebration called Lupercalia held around the 15th of February which would make an out-of-control frat party look like Cinderella getting out of her converted pumpkin carriage. But, you know, things have to start somewhere and Rome gets the honor of being first on the block for this one.

Moving the story on, it seems that old Emperor Claudius II who was Rome’s big boss at the time was trying to build up his army so he could go out and conquer down on other country’s heads but it seemed that very few would join up in Claud’s military because a lot of Roman men were married and wanted to stay that way so they laid low and didn’t join. At least this is what Cluad deduced, being the sharp-minded Emperor he was. What’d he do to solve the problem? Simple, he cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome until such time that he had enough troops to defeat the world. I guess he didn’t think about how long that might take. But Emperors don’t have to be smart to be Emperors as we’ve seen down through history right up to this day. His edict didn’t go over too well with all those young couples in love so along comes a very nice Priest in Rome who was generous and loving and loved by all who knew him. His name was Saint Valentine and he, like almost everyone in Rome, wasn’t too fond of “Claudius the Cruel” as he was generally known. So, in defiance of the no-marry edict, St. Valentine began secretly pronouncing wedding vows to couples in secret hiding places to avoid detection. Unfortunately, as they say, ‘Detection Happens’ and the kind old priest got caught in the act while marrying a couple, who escaped, but he did not. He was dragged off to a horrible prison, sentenced to death, but, oddly, was allowed many visitors to his dungeon before he was executed. One of these young visitors was the daughter of a prison guard who let her into St. Valentine’s cell where she and the priest would talk for hours. The young woman gave him comfort through this dark time before he met his darker time. That day of martyrdom came on February 14, 269 AD. But first he wrote a note, which was delivered to the guard’s daughter thanking her for her belief in what he did and the loyal friendship they shared. And the way he signed the note was the very beginning of what we celebrate today. He signed it: “Love from your Valentine”.

I didn’t make this up, no matter what you say! It’s too good a story not to be real.

I must go now; I haven’t yet picked up a thing for my sweetie. Wait! I’m in Krispy Kreme! I’ve got an idea…

Come on by and say Happy Valentine’s to me and everybody else.

Love,
Kupid Krispy Mike