Dunkin’ Donuts Aren’t in California… Yet?

http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2008/07/05/dunkin-donuts-arent-in-california-yet/

by kimboslice • 18 years ago

13 19 18 years ago

zach• 18 years ago

Wow, 3 points in an hour? Well, since at least three people care, there used to be Dunkin' Donuts in California. At least they were here in LA until about 12 years ago, when they gave up on trying to crack the market.

The interesting thing is that in the LA area there's a former DD that rebranded itself "Boston Donuts" and had the same donuts (but not the coffee, sadly) ever since:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/boston-donuts-la-habra

Maybe there's such a holdout up north as well.

boucher• 18 years ago

http://www.sunnydonuts.com/

The donuts are in fact pretty much exactly the same as Dunkin' Donuts, but the coffee is not.

caudicus• 18 years ago

As a Boston native, I can attest that people go to Dunkin' Donuts for the coffee, not the donuts. That is the main attraction of the place - donuts, bagels, etc - are all secondary. A chain that doesn't have the coffee is bound to fail.

Here's another article talking about this - http://www.lasnark.com/attn-los-angeles-entrepreneurs-please...

silencio4• 18 years ago

In regards to that article and many others I've seen: I know there's HUGE demand for Dunkin' Donuts here. I would _love_ to open one, and it seems I would meet most/all of their franchisee criteria - not to mention I'm shopping for a business to either buy or open, franchise or not right now anyway. The only problem is that they don't give out any franchising opportunities in CA. I'm sure I'm not the only person who would kill to open one here. I could think of half a dozen locations in LA where I could buy out an existing business or lease a space.

So PLEASE blame the company, no one else. I wish I could just get that through all those thick skulls (especially comment #8 on that link) that think you just need to throw money at a franchise to open a new store so it's just a lack of people interested in doing so. It's NEVER that easy to run/start a business, and if the company says no, they mean no.

jdamon• 18 years ago

I'm dying for some west coast dunkin donuts and starbucks doesn't come close...

wallflower2• 18 years ago

Finally had a Krispy Kreme donut. I really don't understand the hype. Maybe if I had grown up with them as part of my formative years?

silencio4• 18 years ago

I'm not sure this is such a horrible thing. I live in LA and there is no shortage of good coffee shops of all sorts (I'm definitely not counting Starbucks here, but I may be slightly partial to Peet's and Coffee Bean both for convenience if I can't find anything else). I haven't noticed anything terribly different up in San Francisco either.

Annnnd well, if I'm not making my own coffee at home (which I usually do), I've fallen in love with the iced coffee at McDonald's. I don't like anything there (except maybe the 60 cent ice cream cones), but that iced coffee is mighty cheap and is pretty drinkable.

ardit33• 18 years ago

I think donuts wont be a huge seller in the bay area. It seems they are more of a comfort food when it is cold, and it is never that cold in here. Plus people are more health consious in here (SF is the slimest large city in the USA).

Plus there are so many options for coffee. Dunkin Donuts coffee is mediocre, slightly better than McDonalds. The only thing that they have is the huge cup sizes. A medium DD coffie is more like a large starbucks one.

Anyway, I lived in Boston for three years, and moved in SF, and never missed them.

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

At least we have In-n-Out!

far33d• 18 years ago

Having DD again is one of the few things that has made moving from SF to Cambridge more palatable for me.

bayareaguy• 18 years ago

We don't have them near me, so I have to ask - is there anything particularly good about them other than their donuts? Do they have WiFi? Are they open 24/7?

I find myself at Starbucks more than I'd like to for the WiFi and they close too early.

defen• 18 years ago

The worst part is that I see their commercials on TV all the time (in SF)...Why do they lead me on like this??!

cubix• 18 years ago

I'm surprised more people don't roast their own coffee. I've been doing it for over a year now. It's easy, and buying green beans is roughly a third the cost of buying them roasted. (Of course, you can make the process as technical as you want, which would no doubt appeal to many here.) Most importantly though, freshly roasted coffee tastes infinitely better than anything can buy at all but a few specialty shops.

steveplace• 18 years ago

A lot of their stores don't make their donuts fresh anymore. They have a distribution network, and it's supposed to reduce overhead.

icey• 18 years ago

I don't know enough about Dunkin' Donuts to know the answer to their situation specifically.

That being said, a lot of food corporations own multiple trademarks / brands. Sometimes when a corporation buys another corporation, a decision is made regarding branding, and the geography of where each brand will live.

This is why you have Hardee's on the East Coast and Carls Jr. on the West Coast. They're the same company, albeit with a slightly varied menu.

So, I wonder if there is a DD owned donut chain in California, and it's just not common knowledge.

[Edit: I did a little research and it looks like that may be the case. There are quite a few multi-national corporations with a hand in Dunkin Donuts' corporate life: http://www.dunkinbrands.com/aboutus/history.html]

[Edit 2: Evidently it's not that complicated; Dunkin Donuts was in CA previously, and withdrew in the late 90's due to market forces (i.e. poor sales). I read an article that said in 2002 95% of their locations were east of the Mississippi.

So, it looks like it's just economics at work.]

Dunkin’ Donuts Aren’t in California… Yet?

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