IDIOT NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS and KRISPY KREME

I'm with you on this, and I think newspapers don't do enough with them. No, you don't have to write a puff piece when Whole Foods or Krispy Kreme deigns to open up in your town. But, if it -is- the talk of the town, then you should note it and do a story of some sort. In and Out opened a store here in late November, early December, and the lines didn't die down until February.

At my old weekly, we would do a Business Roundup once a month - Openings, significant anniversaries, and also closings. It always did pretty well from a reader perspective, and after a couple runnings, you'd get leads from readers. You always have to make sure it isn't too "rah rah, business yay!", but plenty of people are interested in this stuff.

 

Suddenly, a lot of nothing towns along Interstate highways feel validated.
I'm not sure you could limbo under a bar set that low.

 

There is a CfA opening up a couple towns over in April. It will be the only one in about a 15-mile radius so it will be bedlam for a month or two.

A Sonic opened nearby four or five years ago. They needed cops to direct traffic on opening day and the drive-thru lines were long for a couple weeks.

KK made a big push here about 20 years ago, but eventually all the shops closed. Too many Dunks and a fair number of Starbucks, too.

 

I don't get it. Sonic is ass.

 

Sonic’s food offerings have improved greatly in the last 15 years, but they rip you off on ice cream. They hand you a little thimble of ice cream, cover it up with whipped cream and then put a little red cherry on top. Five bucks.

 

I'm guessing Wicked is in the Peabody, MA area, like I was at the time. It was literally the first one to open after... I don't know, 15 to 20 years of seeing it advertised nationally? I think that, along with some word of mouth about how awesome the limeades are, probably led to some "wow!" factor for a while. About... two years ago, one opened in Warwick, RI - the second in the state - and lines were intense for about a week before trailing down to normal fast food levels.

 

They screwed up expansion after their IPO and franchises were not in a good position to succeed in the 2000s. It wasn’t competition, it was the royalties and supply inflation. Same thing with Quizno’s.

 

I thought the same thing about Victorville. But the last time I drove through on the way to Vegas, I noticed the population was 120,000. Hesperia (95,000) and Oak Hills (10,000) are right next to it. Bigger than I thought. We happened to be driving to Vegas the day the Cracker Barrel opened a couple of years ago, and the line went around the place at 10 a.m.

 

Interesting. I hadn’t paid much attention.

Man, those Quizno’s ads were annoying. But I do love me a toasted sub.

When I was in northern Virginia, a Chick-fil-A opened down the street from the office. It’s not like the D.C. area is a CfA desert. The drive-thru line was long for weeks. It was banana pudding shake season, perhaps that did it.

I have a special place in my heart for Sheetz and Wawa, but we’ll never get them this far north.

 

That's the thing. Both places have their fans, but Dunkins are EVERYWHERE. There are 23 of them within 20 miles of my house. They've been ubiquitous for a long time.

KKs are rare. There are five within 20 miles. So KK fans let out a cheer when one opens close to them.

 

The ultimate example of this is Wal-Mart ... which probably hasn't taken out an ROP ad in decades, and no longer puts inserts in the Sunday paper (at least around here).

We used to have a few fast-food restaurants put coupon inserts into our paper (Carl's Jr., Wendy's, Subway), but between the declining readership and practical problems (such as inserts sticking together, resulting in papers at the end of the press run not getting any), those went away, too.

 

Krispy Kreme came into the Toronto area some years back with great fanfare and was clobbered by Tim Hortons which is by far the biggest kid on the block here in Canada in that part of the fast food world. There are three in the Toronto area, there are three Tims within a five-minute walk of where I am right now in downtown Toronto. There are three Tims outlets alone in the mall up the street from the house.