Dunkin’ Donuts, the Canton-based chain of coffee-and-baked-goods cafes, announced the 12 finalists who will compete for the chance to win a $12,000 grand prize and have their winning donut sold in participating Dunkin’ Donuts locations throughout the country.

Among those making the finals in the “Create Dunkin’s Next Donut” contest was Caitlyn Vandervelde of Coventry, R.I., whose creation is called Grandma’s Blueberry Maple Donut. Vandervelde’s entry is described as a blueberry cake donut with maple icing topped with graham cracker crunch.

Another entry perhaps alludes to the culinary tastes of the late pop crooner Elvis Presley. “The King,” submitted by James Smith of Mount Vernon, N.Y. is a Bananas Foster-filled donut with peanut butter icing and chopped peanuts, the Dunkin’ Donuts press release said.

To learn more about this donut lineup – or to cast a vote for a favorite – please click here.

Each finalist wins $1,200 and will travel to Dunkin’ Donuts’ University in Braintree, where Ph.D’s in the field toil at the chain’s culinary skunkworks as they seek to pioneer new frontiers in breakfast science and hand-held cuisine.

“The winning donut will be selected based on the outcome of the bake-off and America’s online public voting,” Dunkin’ Donuts said in its press release. “The grand prize winner of the ‘Create Dunkin’s Next Donut’ contest will be unveiled on National Donut Day.”

As sinker buffs know, National Donut Day falls on June 5. The photo that tops this post was provided by the company.

Say It Isn’t So, Joe.  The newest spokesperson for Dunkin Donuts in none other that Food Network cookng sensation and globe-trotter Rachel Ray.  The perky, cheerful Ray will appear in a new advertising campaign on TV, print, radio, online and in-store marketing materials, in addition to making personal appearances on behalf of the brand.  According to the Boston Business Journal, she will also “lend her culinary perspective to the Dunkin’ Donuts culinary team in the development of new, healthier options for food and beverages”.

I wonder if we’ll start seeing more donut shops profiled in Ray’s “$40 a Day” show on Food Network?

Source: Boston Business Journal

It came as no surprise to me that Dunkin’ Donuts bested Harvard University and every other Boston institution save one (Brigham and Women’s Hospital) in a area survey conducted by the public relations firm Morrissey & Company. The Harvard Crimson reports:

Dunkin’ Donuts has put some distance between itself and Harvard in a recent survey gauging the reputation of various Massachusetts companies and institutions.
The survey, released on Friday by the Boston-area public relations firm Morrissey & Company, saw Harvard fall to seventh overall from its first place position last year. Nearby collegiate rivals Boston University and Tufts took fourth and fifth, respectively, while Dunkin’ Donuts vaulted into the second spot. The top position in the survey was occupied by Brigham and Women’s Hospital—a Harvard affiliate.

Prior to 2006, Harvard ranked first in the three previous administrations of the survey. Peter Morrissey, founder of the company that conducted the survey, said Harvard’s fall in the rankings is worth noting.

“To go from the top of the ratings… down to where you were this year—our researchers did tell us that that was significant,” Morrissey said. “You wouldn’t describe that as a statistical anomaly.”

According to a Morrissey & Co. press release, the survey was administered to 200 local business leaders and asked for assessments of 74 Boston area companies and institutions in areas ranging from “reputation” to “ethics” to “financial stability.” This was the first year that Dunkin’ Donuts was on the list of institutions assessed. Organizations on the list are selected for the poll based on employment figures in Massachusetts.

Some Harvard undergraduates were quite miffed at being slammed by commoners, even as they wolfed down products of lowly donut chain:

As he entered the Bow Street shop yesterday afternoon, Dan Smith ’83 had his own thoughts to offer on the donut franchise’s superior reputation.

“I think Harvard has probably contributed more to society, and donuts really aren’t that good for you anyway.’

Even the donut-loving Kathryn G. Maxson ’10 did not appear to be particularly pleased with the donut vender’s success in the Morrissey poll.

“As far as the longevity of the institution is concerned, I certainly respect Harvard more than Dunkin’ Donuts being that Harvard is an educational institution and Dunkin’ Donuts is a fast food agency,” Maxson said. “And I think it is a sad statement on American values if Dunkin’ Donuts is ranked higher.”

I don’t happen to agree with either Ms. Maxson or Mr. Smith. I think the survey results are a statement on the low standards of ethics, humility and honesty set by Harvard students. And a donut has never killed anyone, like Senator Ted Kennedy (Class of 1956) or “Unibomber” Ted Kaczynski (Class of 1962).

Source: Harvard Crimson

More grumblings from the Food Gestapo, this time from New York City . In the name of the “public good”, New York City officials are pushing for a complete ban on foods containing trans-fatty acids. Unfortunately, this includes one of my favorite snacks: Dunkin’ Donuts.

Three years after the city banned smoking in restaurants, health officials are talking about prohibiting something they say is almost as bad: artificial trans fatty acids. The city health department unveiled a proposal Tuesday that would bar cooks at any of the city’s 24,600 food service establishments from using ingredients that contain the artery-clogging substance, commonly listed on food labels as partially hydrogenated oil.

Doctors agree that trans fats are unhealthy in nearly any amount, but a spokesman for the restaurant industry said he was stunned the city would seek to ban a legal ingredient found in millions of American kitchens.

The proposal could create havoc: Cooks would be forced to discard old recipes and scrutinize every ingredient in their pantry. A restaurant could face a fine if an inspector finds the wrong type of vegetable shortening on its shelves.

The proposal also would create a huge problem for national chains. Among the fast foods that would need to get an overhaul or face a ban: McDonald’s french fries, Kentucky Fried Chicken and several varieties of Dunkin’ Donuts.

The War on Good-Tasting Food represents government intrusion into our private lives at its worst, with the future potential for government to dictate what citizens can and cannot eat at home. This proposal would represent a loss of personal freedom greater than any of the combatant detainee protocols proposed by the Bush Administration as part of the War on Terror. It could potentially lead to a ban on Twinkes, french fries, buffalo wings and donuts in their current form, and criminalize those persons who sell such food. What a bunch of baloney–which could also be banned, as it contains naturally-occuring trans fats present in all meat products.

In a sign that its once-marquee brand is slipping, Yahoo is spending heavily on television and radio advertising to boost awareness of improvements to its Internet portal. As an extra added bonus, users that select Yahoo as their home page will receive coupons for free Dunkin Donuts coffee.

As its rivals create a bigger buzz on the Internet, Yahoo Inc. is hitting television and radio airwaves to remind people that its Web site remains on the cutting edge of technology and culture. The advertising blitz, scheduled to begin Thursday, marks the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company’s biggest marketing push in two years.

Besides buying TV and radio time, world’s most popular Web site also will be spreading its messages in movie theaters across the United States. As an added promotional gift, Yahoo will offer coupons for a free cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts to anyone who sets Yahoo.com as their home page this Friday.

My own use of Yahoo declined drastically over the past several years as I began blogging more often and using other search engines such as Google and Dogpile. The final nail in the coffin for Yahoo was when Yahoo/China began turning over user data to Chinese government authorities, who then used the information to arrest and jail several Chinese anti-communist bloggers. Not even a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is enough to make me go back.

Source: AP

In a very limited rollout, Dunkin’ Donuts is testing new lunch-menu items which it hopes will expand its customer base beyond the traditional breakfast crowd.
Nearly a year after McDonald’s began grabbing a piece of the morning coffee market by offering Newman’s Own Organics blend, Dunkin’ Donuts is striking back by offering foods that go beyond breakfast. A Dunkin’ Donuts in Nashua is one of several nationwide that will begin offering hot dogs wrapped in pastry, flatbread sandwiches and other food designed to draw more customers in the afternoon and evening.

“We do about 70% of our business between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m.,” said John Motta, who owns 10 franchises in the Nashua area, including the store selected for a makeover. “From 11 a.m. to the next morning, you do have customers but there’s really not a lot of business.”

The new “concept stores” also will spruce up their breakfast and drinks menus and change their look, using new maroon and yellow tones and replacing fixed swivel seats with wooden chairs. Two others are opening in Pawtucket, R.I., and in Euclid, Ohio, and more are planned.

Dunkin’ Donuts, under new management since parent Dunkin’ Brands was acquired for $2.4 billion last year by three Boston private equity firms, is using the selected stores to test public reaction in different areas of the country, said spokesman Thomas Lee of Regan Communications.

Color me a skeptic. I think that Dunkin’ Donuts is successful because of its down-to-earth atmosphere and limited menu beyond drinks. It’s difficult to imagine going to Dunkin’s Donuts for a hot dog, let alone for dinner. But let’s see how this experiment pans out.

Source: AP

I’ve always enjoyed listening to Dunkin’ Donuts CEO Jon Luther speak. He has a down-to-earth attitude that is refreshing and quite rare in corporate America. Despite his corporate success, it turns out that he’s hasn’t strayed from his Buffalo, NY-roots.

The 62-year-old executive, who is now based in Massachusetts, has rich memories of growing up in the City of Tonawanda and Kenmore and graduating from Kenmore East High School in 1961. “I’m so thankful for my good fortune,” Luther said. “And I think some of the reason I’ve had good fortune is because of the values and things I learned here. You’ve got to give back to that.”

There’s always a part of me that stays in Buffalo, so when you have that, you want to have your business here, too, for several reasons. One is Dunkin’ Donuts is such a great brand for the city, they deserve that. . . . You can also create employment. . . . You come back and create 25 jobs [per store]. Now, they’re not all high-paying jobs. There are kids going to college, you can help go to college, there’s kids getting a start in life. And there’s three managers’ jobs. There will be supervisors here. So hopefully there are a couple of career paths here that might not be here if we didn’t come. And I can engineer that because of my loyalty to the city. . . . I can predict one of the managers in one of these stores will one day own their own store, because they get their start here.

How’s that for honesty and integrity?

Source: Buffalo News

Better watch out–the Food Police are going after your coffee and donuts!

That’s the message being sent by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a self-appointed consumer group that has targeted restaurant chains for serving food not meeting their standards for healthy fare. Last week, the Center for Science in the Public Interest sued KFC–formally known as Kentucky Fried Chicken–for frying foods in oils containing trans fat. Now, the New York-based consumer-health group is planning a campaign against the Starbucks Corp. because of the “high-calorie, high-fat” coffee and baked goods products it sells. From Reuters:

Starbucks Corp. may be next on the target list of a consumer-health group that this week sued the operator of the KFC fried chicken restaurant chain for frying foods in oils high in harmful trans fat. The Center for Science in the Public Interest said it is planning to campaign against the global cafe chain because of the increased risk of obesity, heart disease and cancer associated with high-calorie, high-fat products it sells.

And the possibility of legal action against Starbucks, similar to the case it is taking against KFC owner Yum Brands Inc., has not been ruled out, said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson. “Regular consumers of Starbucks products could face Venti-sized health problems,” Jacobson said, referring to Starbucks’ use of the ‘Venti’ designation for ‘large.’

The group is primarily funded by newsletter subscribers and individual donors. It has support in the campaign from the small IWW Starbucks Workers Union, which has members in three stores, all in New York.

After ranting on about the lack of caloric and nutritional information displays–available on request at all Starbucks’ stores–and complaining that its free beverages and food for workers policy is making employees fat, head Food Nazi Michael F. Jacobson takes a swipe at Dunkin’ Donuts’ blue collar clientele: “People expect foods from Dunkin’ Donuts to be unhealthy, but Starbucks has more of an upper middle class, healthy, hip, politically correct facade. [However] the food is just as harmful to your arteries.”

What a bunch of jerks.

Source: Reuters

Kudos to Dunkin’ Donuts management for establishing a company-wide policy for employing only US citizens and legal immigrants at its 5,000 US stores. It’s no secret that the US restaurant industry is one of the largest employers of illegal aliens. More than a few times, we at DunkinDonutsTalk.com have seen comments on blogs and other websites complaining about food service workers (including some at Dunkin’ Donuts) who speak little or no English, and no doubt these complaints are sometimes related to the hiring of illegal aliens.

On May 30, Dunkin’ Brands, the parent company of Dunkin Donuts, announced that it would require all 5,000 of its franchisees to participate in the Basic Pilot verification program starting June 1. Gerri Ratliff, chief of the verification division for U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), says Dunkin’ Brands isn’t alone — roughly 200 new companies — both small and large businesses — are signing up for the free program every month. Over 6,200 U.S. employers have joined so far.

“Dunkin’ Brands is participating in [the] Basic Pilot program because we see it as a way to help our franchisees comply with the laws when the authenticity of their new hires’ credentials are difficult to discern,” said Dunkin’ Brands Chief Legal Officer Stephen Horn in an e-mail statement. “We were compelled to participate in the [program] because of the difficulty faced by employers for screening new hires within the confines of the law.”

The issue of hiring only legal workers should be a no-brainer. Would people accept treatment from physicians not certified by the relevant Medical Board, or allow teachers to be hired without a criminal background check? In this age of frivilous lawsuits and declining standards, its about time that corporations and individuals set a minimum bar for hiring and then live by it. Why shouldn’t every company, not just Dunkin’ Donuts, agree to follow the law as written and set reasonable standards in the hiring of its employees?

Source: BusinessWeek

Last month, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthly article on Dunkin’ Donuts’ corporate strategy–on page A1 no less! The pressure that Starbucks has exerted on Dunkin’ Donuts recently led the coffee-and-donuts chain’s executives to study ways to counter the Seattle-based coffee giant. Their findings were both predictable–at least to this observer–and disturbing to some of the Dunkin’ Donuts faithful.

The key finding in Dunkin’ Donuts study of coffee drinkers was that consumers were “so polarized that company researchers dubbed them “tribes” — each of whom loathed the very things that made the other tribe loyal to their coffee shop. Dunkin’ fans viewed Starbucks as pretentious and trendy, while Starbucks loyalists saw Dunkin’ as austere and unoriginal.

“I don’t get it,” one Dunkin’ regular told researchers after visiting Starbucks. “If I want to sit on a couch, I stay at home.”

All of us here at Dunkin Donuts Talk are aware of the differences between the two “tribes”, but I was very surprised by the loyalty of their customer base. Many of them who participated in the study fiercely resisted the concept of a more upscale Dunkin’ Donuts, a la Starbucks.

Early research showed consumers wanted nicer stores, but revealed a potential problem: the loyal Dunkin’ tribe was bewildered and turned off by the atmosphere at Starbucks. They groused that crowds of laptop users made it difficult to find a seat, Dunkin’ says. They didn’t like Starbucks’ “tall,” “grande” and “venti” lingo for small, medium and large coffees. And, Dunkin’ says, they couldn’t understand why anyone would pay as much as $4 for a cup of coffee.

“It was almost as though they were a group of Martians talking about a group of Earthlings,” says Justin Holloway, an executive vice president at Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos Inc., the advertising agency that helped Dunkin’ with its research. One customer told researchers that lingering in a Starbucks felt like “celebrating Christmas with people you don’t know.”
Dunkin’ researchers concluded that it wasn’t income that set the two tribes apart, as much as an ideal: Dunkin’ tribe members wanted to be part of a crowd, while members of the Starbucks tribe had a desire to stand out as individuals. “The Starbucks tribe, they seek out things to make them feel more important,” Ms. Lewis says. Members of the Dunkin’ Donuts tribe “don’t need to be any more important than they are.”

The study’s findings made it clear to Dunkin’ Donuts executives that they needed to think over their proposed makeover of their beloved brand, lest they make a mistake of New Coke-proportions. They decided to focus on changes to the menu, with more snack items and smoothie-based drinks, along with piped-in music and a self-service new coffee bar with stainless steel pitchers of cream and skim milk — a first for Dunkin’ Donuts. The net result will be a “fresher” look for Dunkin’ Donuts, but without the couches, wireless internet or stacks of CDs getting in the way of the customers.

Dunkin’ executives made dozens of decisions, big and small, ranging from where to put the espresso machines to how much of its signature pink and orange color scheme to retain to where to display its fresh-baked goods. They decided early on that Dunkin’ would keep its goal of moving customers through its cash register line in two minutes; Starbucks, by comparison, has a goal of three minutes. Dunkin’ customers said they didn’t want any changes in store design to result in longer waiting times. Out went the square laminate tables, to be replaced by round imitation-granite tabletops and sleek chairs. Dunkin’ covered store walls in espresso brown and dialed down the pink and orange tones.

To what tribe do you belong (see poll on left)?

Source: The Wall Street Journal