October 19, 2003

Rolling in the Dough

Well, since I won't be enjoying Steve Jobs' Net music creation I'll offer up a brief review of Making Dough: The 12 Secret Ingredients of Krispy Kreme's Sweet Success. I'm a Krispy Kreme fanatic. I waited with glee for the day a store opened in the Milwaukee area. The wait was worth it. Until 12.11.01 I only knew the myth of Krispy Kreme, but with one bite I was hooked for life. Also on that day, I felt the customer love (obsession) with the company. While waiting in line for my doughnuts a couple behind me said they drove 90 minutes. There is something special about a company where people will come from over 100 miles away just for your product. In Making Dough there are a few stories of people coming from far away and waiting hours, even days, just to be the first to open a new store. That's tremendous devotion.

At the center of it all is not a hole but a wonderful product. The Krispy Kreme doughnut is sweet, gooey, sticky, and, if hot, melts in your mouth. The company knows it has the greatest doughnuts in the world and focuses all their efforts to get you to try one. Once you bite, they have you hooked. Stores have glass walls turning them into doughnut-making theaters. Wholesale operations provide branding and cheap advertising. Their famous Hot Light lets the public know when they can get their hot, golden, glazed goodie.

Making Dough tells the story of how Vernon Rudolph turned his last $25 into a regional icon. Then Krispy Kreme lost its identity when Beatrice took over after Rudolph's death. Store franchisees saved the company with a buyout that eventually led to the company going public in 2000 and expanding across the country and overseas.

At times the book reads like a long magazine article. It's fluffy (pun intended) in places and glazes (again intended) over some company foibles. But it's still a fascinating book examining an American success story.