But, just like Scarlett O’ Hara, the sweet Southern company was down, but you couldn’t keep her there for long.  A new buyer surfaced. He changed the logo and the recipe back to the original secret formula.  (To this day there are just four people who know the recipe; locked up in a vault at the company’s mix plant in Winston-Salem, it is blended into a mystery mix and shipped off to Krispy Kreme stores everywhere.) 

The new owner, Joe McAleer, noticed that sales of the doughnuts in Chattanooga were going through the roof.  He sent one of his employees there for a look-see.  Turns out the store manager had printed up an ordinary block sign that read HOT DOUGHNUTS NOW!  Initially, his customers had complained because he kept the sign up all of the time, even when his doughnuts weren’t hot.  So, the store manager had gone to J.C. Penney and purchased a window shade.  When he wasn’t making doughnuts he pulled the shade closed; when he was, he pulled open the blind and customers poured in. Et voila!, a brilliant marketing concept, the famous neon HOT DOUGHNUTS NOW! sign, was born.

Joe’s son Mack later came up with the idea of “doughnut theater.”  The company put the doughnut-making equipment in stores so people could see the entire doughnut-making process.  That way a salesperson could pluck a hot one right off the conveyor belt and hand it to a drooling customer.  He also increased the size of the doughnuts by 40%.  Another publicity coup that garnered huge national exposure was delivering hundreds of boxes of doughnuts to everyone at The Today Show when the New York City store opened in 1996.  (Did you know that Pascal and I lived one block away from the NYC Krispy Kreme?).  To this day, the company has no traditional media advertising budget; it’s simply much cheaper and more effective to give away doughnuts. 

The results of this incredible saga have been awfully tasty.  Today, Krispy Kreme has 360 stores, more than five hundred million in sales and an excess of $33 million in profits per year.  A typical store turns out 3,000 doughnuts in an hour, and in just one week, Krispy Kreme produces enough of these hot, glazed confections to make a line of doughnuts from New York City to Los Angeles.  Talk about glazing the trail!

Humbly and gratefully yours,

Charlene Dupray

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