9/23/2002 07:32:40 PM|||Scott Lewis|||

Let us raise a cup of coffee (extra light, with lots of sugar) and toast the memory of Dunkin' Donuts founder William Rosenberg. In a time when entrepreneurship usually is associated with technology, Rosenberg's career offers the compelling counterexample of a man who sold coffee and doughnuts, yet still managed to change the world and grow rich in the process.

Rosenberg, who died Sept. 20 at the age of 86, was already a successful businessman when he opened his first coffee and doughnut store in 1948 in Quincy, Mass. Renamed Dunkin' Donuts in 1950, the shop offered 52 varieties of doughnuts--far more than its competitors did.

Rosenberg's shop also offered hotel-quality coffee to people on the go, who were used to settling for low-quality brew. Anticipating Starbucks (nasdaq: SBUX - news - people ) by several decades, Rosenberg realized early on that consumers would gladly pay more for a good cup of coffee than for a mediocre one.

Having made his concept a success, Rosenberg in the mid-1950s became a franchise pioneer, spreading the Dunkin' Donuts brand across the land. He took his firm public in 1968 and sold it to Allied Domecq (nyse: AED - news - people ) in 1990. Nowadays there are more than 5,000 Dunkin' Donuts stores around the world, serving a collective 1.5 million cups of coffee each day.

The chain is virtually ubiquitous in the Boston area, where many people do not consider themselves truly awake until they have wrapped their hands around a large, steaming cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee thickened with lots of cream and sugar.

In this era of Starbucks and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (nyse: KKD - news - people ), people take it for granted that investing in coffee and doughnuts can make you rich. But it took a visionary like Rosenberg to see the possibilities in a chain of stores specializing in this humble fare. He woke America up, in more ways than one.

Jump

|||110428400873856052|||Making Money In The Morning