Hot Doughnuts, Hot Brand

Via Obscure Store, I found an article in Fortune Magazine about Krispy Kreme: The Hole Story, how Krispy Kreme became the hottest brand in America. It's a great read because it is such an unusual success story. It's growing by leaps and bounds, and has people in northern cities lining up for blocks to get the first hot doughnuts from new store locations. Yet they do no national advertising.

To this day the company has no traditional media advertising budget. It's simply much cheaper and more effective to give away doughnuts. Before entering a new market, such as Boston at the end of June, Krispy Kreme inundates TV and radio stations and newspapers with free doughnuts.

There's also a great bit of local history in the Krispy Kreme legend:

"A l!
ot of people think that all our traditions go way, way back, but not all of them do," says company marketing chief Stan Parker. Take the famous hot doughnuts now sign. Everybody knows that when a Krispy Kreme store flips on its neon hot doughnuts now sign, the doughnuts are coming right off the line. Around 1980 the folks in Winston noticed sales at the Chattanooga store were going through the roof. HQ decided to send a man up to Chattanooga for a look-see. Turns out the store manager, Bob Glidden, had printed up an ordinary block sign that read hot doughnuts now. But his customers complained that he kept the sign up all the time, even when his doughnuts weren't hot. So Glidden went down to J.C. Penney and bought a window shade. When he wasn't making doughnuts he pulled the shade closed; when he was cooking, he pulled open the blind and customers streamed in. Bingo, a sales tactic was born!

A hot doughnut sounds pretty great right about now. If only Krispy Kreme !
would give us a store on South Broad!

Posted by John Hawbaker at June 26, 2003 08:10 AM | TrackBack