Dunkin’ Donuts Aren’t in California… Yet? | Hacker News Reader

Dunkin’ Donuts Aren’t in California… Yet?

ryanspoon.com

13 pointskimboslice19 comments

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.

http://www.sunnydonuts.com/

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

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...

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.

Have you asked Dunkin Donuts why they won't sell any franchises in CA?

I personally haven't because I know others (like some of the brokers and folks I talk to often) who've inquired about it with no success. I don't think it's a lack of money or interest that's stopping the franchise from opening locations in CA.

I haven't researched the franchise itself much for the above-mentioned obvious reasons so I can't realllly say much more, but I'd have to guess that it's either taken by someone else or the franchise has some future plans for the state if they're not willing to open stores now.

I read an article in the late 90s in Esquire magazine about a businessman who tried for years to open a Krispy Kreme franchise in a new state. He loved Krispy Kreme and knew it would be a hit. They refused. He visited headquarters, wrote them letters, became friends with the secretaries. He was persistent to the point of obsessive. He didn't take no for an answer. They finally relented after (iirc) 9 years. It's a good article - worth finding on microfiche.

I wish I was that dedicated ;) But I don't have years to spend (I have other plans for my life at this point too!), this is a family venture, and there are lots of other franchises and independent businesses out on the market.

Maybe someone else might be that obsessive about opening it, but I'm not the person. I'm just pointing out though that it's not possible that people with enough money and experience haven't considered trying to open a Dunkin' Donuts in California lately.

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.]

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

At least we have In-n-Out!

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?

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

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

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

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