edf40wrjww2CF_PaperMaster:Desc
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc.
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. is a retailer and wholesaler of doughnuts. Its principal business is owning and franchising Krispy Kreme doughnut stores where over 20 varieties of doughnuts, including its Hot Original Glazed, are made, sold and distributed and where an array of coffees and other beverages are offered. Krispy Kreme began a single doughnut shop in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on July 13, 1937, where Vermon Rudolph bought a secret yeast-raised doughnut recipe from a French chef from New Orleans, rented a building in and began selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Within a short time, Rudolph's products became so popular that he cut a hole in his factory's wall to sell directly to customers, thus was born the central Krispy Kreme retail concept: the factory store. By the 1940s and 1950s there were a small chain of stores that were mostly family-owned, 29 shops in 12 states. During the 1960s Krispy Kreme had a steady growth throughout the Southeast and began expanding.
After Rudolph's death, in 1973, Beatrice Foods bought the company and quickly expanded it to more than 100 locations. Beatrice introduced other products, such as soups and sandwiches, and cut costs by changing the appearance of the stores and substituting cheaper ingredients in the doughnut mixture. By 1980 the company was starting to fail, so Beatrice put it up for sale. A group of franchisees who had been the first Krispy Kreme franchisees, completed a leveraged buyout of the company in 1982, and they also bought back the original doughnut formula and the company's traditional logo. The company struggled for awhile, but by 1989, Krispy Kreme had become debt-free and had slowly begun t ...