January 12, 2006

Quickies: The Great Donut Caper

• Now this is a Daily News cover like in the old days! Whoo! Blood for blood! [DN]

• I know Philadelphians love(d) Krispy Kreme, so I'm showing this to you: This story is like the In Cold Blood of the Roosevelt Mall Krispy Kreme closing. It's broken into four sections and is my favorite story of the year so far. [Northeast Times]

• Designing the perfect bar mitzvah menu is apparently the most complicated thing in the world. [Inky]

• I'm out doing a story until sometime in the afternoon. I'll be back later with all the one-liners about typos I've come up with on the way to my interviews.

Posted by D-Mac at 07:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

December 28, 2005

Quickies: Trenton tea party

• The Inquirer, clearly, has laid off its entire design staff and is using the Designbot 5283 version 1.2 beta 1, since today's front page layout (at left) is the same exact one as yesterday. The story's decent, too. [Inky]

• It's an all-around bad day for doughnuts: "Time to make the donuts" actor Michael Vale is dead at 83. [AP via CNN.com]

• If you read one column headline this year, make it this one: Don't shortchange historic importance of tea. [Trentonian]

• A fun, nice, holiday story: Man stabs friend on Christmas Eve. Aww. [Trenton Times]

• Some housekeeping: I wrote up a whole year-in-Philly recap and it really only works as one piece, so I'm just going to tighten it up and run it sometime tomorrow or Friday. Youse all okay with that? Good.

Posted by D-Mac at 02:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Everything must go (including the customers)

For a long while, perhaps the only Krispy Kreme north of the Mason-Dixon Line was just outside of Philadelphia on U.S. Route 1 in Bensalem. It closed its doors years ago, but the Southern doughnut franchise eventually expanded into Philadelphia, promising 16 stores when it said it was coming into town in 2001. The Daily News wrote about 100 advertisements feature stories about the company, people lined up at 5 a.m. at the Roosevelt Mall location and Krispy Kreme was a sensation.

Fast forward to 2005, and all Krispy Kreme locations in Philadelphia have been closed. The company's been in a dire financial situation for a while now, and the subsidiary that runs the Philly stores just filed for Chapter 11, citing $24.1 million in debts.

Usually when stores close, though, they have going out of business sales or they close during off hours. Yesterday, the Krispy Kreme location on Cottman Avenue closed while customers were waiting in line to buy doughnuts. Writes the Philadelphia Business Journal:

But a customer, Shanti Bacari of Philadelphia, said she was at one of the locations, 2327 Cottman Ave. in Northeast Philadelphia, at about 12:30 p.m. Monday when it closed abruptly.

About a dozen customers were trying to get inside and people waiting in the drive-thru line were turned away, she said.

Inside, customers continued to make purchases as it appeared a group of employees were holding a meeting, said Bacari, who was among those turned away.

With corporate strategy like this, somehow I'm not surprised Krispy Kreme's Philly subsidiary has $24 million in debt.

Krispy Kreme down to zero Philadelphia stores [PBJ]

Posted by D-Mac at 12:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)