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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure what you refer to as early dawn, but here in the Midwest all Dunkin’ Donuts and many Starbucks are open at 5am.

Side note: it blows my mind each time I’m in California and I have to drive forty five minutes or more to find a Dunkin’.

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LA is known for their many donut shops, mostly owner-operated. https://time.com/longform/national-doughnut-day-photos/

Here in the Bay Area I have a 24-hour donut shop about a quarter mile away. I have been making a point to patronize them, so they survive COVID.

Dunkin' Donuts pulled out of California, and is shrinking nationally. There are much better options out there if you look...

> Dunkin' Donuts pulled out of California, and is shrinking nationally.

Dunkin' just opened a location in Redwood City, on Woodside Road near El Camino. So they're not pulling out of CA. There are also locations in San Mateo, Fremont, Half Moon Bay, and Concord.

Definitely not as common as Starbucks, but they're growing their presence, not shrinking these days. Source: my wife went to school on the east coast and is a big Dunkin' fan...

Dunkin’ Donuts barely has a presence on the west coast, you are probably better off looking for local chains.

Just playing around with Google Maps I could see about 10 Dunkin’ Donuts in the SF bay area (pop 8 million), and about 20 Dunkin’ Donuts within the Kansas City limits (pop 500,000). I couldn’t find any Dunkin’ Donuts in the Portland or Seattle areas but I didn’t look very hard. My impression is that the folks living in the PNW would regard Dunkin’ Donuts as some kind of foreign intruder.

There are plenty of coffee shops open at 5am, speaking from experience living on the west coast, but if you are particular about getting Dunkin’ Donuts specifically you will usually have to drive farther, on account of them not really being a west coast phenomenon.

Now that I live on the east coast I can see a Dunkin’ Donuts spaced about every quarter mile, and I can only imagine what kind of hysteria led there to be so many of them so close together.

They're closer together than that in Chicago's loop, although I think 7-Eleven wins the density contest. There's one block that has two 7-Elevens on it and there's another across the street from one of the two corners that doesn't have a 7-Eleven on it. (Interestingly, Google maps doesn't show all the locations when I pull up the relevant block.)

Dunkin’ Donuts donuts are an abomination, unedible, atrocious. It’s no surprise to me you don’t see them as much, I’ve been waiting for that particular chain to die for quite some time.

Indeed, even 7-Eleven donuts are superior to Dunkin. And in Los Angeles, at least, donuts seem to be a popular immigrant business and there are a kajillion non-chain donut places everywhere.

It’s for coffee, not donuts. They even rebranded to drop the latter from their name.

It blows my mind that someone would want to find a Dunkin’ in CA where there’s far better options, but to each their own!

Known viable option for coffee for someone from out of town, whereas a local brand is an unknown quantity and McDonalds and Starbucks are undrinkable.

> ...it blows my mind each time I’m in California and I have to drive forty five minutes or more to find a Dunkin’.

It blows my mind that anybody would drive 45 minutes to find a Dunkin' in CA when local donut shops are everywhere and they are so much better (granted, Dunkin' is a pretty low bar).

Not for donuts. Guaranteed minimum viable coffee. Starbucks and McDonalds are undrinkable (opposite ends of the spectrum).

There's a Dunkin just built in Sunnyvale on El Camino, not open yet but they're moving in the furniture. First one I've seen outside of an airport here.

california donuts is 24h

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