Dunkin' Donuts

Whether you're into coffee, donuts, munchkins, or any one of the bazillion breakfast sandwiches they sling every morning, Dunkin' Donuts has something for everyone. But Rome was not built in a day. And the same thing was true for America's most famous donut chain before it came to rule the East Coast with a double chocolate fist. But before we get started, be sure to subscribe to the Weird History Food channel. After that, please OK, now it's time for a little Dunk history. Time to make the donuts. The chain now known as Dunkin' Donuts was founded in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1948 by a man named Dunkin' Q. Donuts. Now, sorry. His name was actually William Rosenberg. But it should have been Donuts because Donuts were his middle name. Rosenberg had already built a successful food truck operation serving the workers of Boston on their breaks. When he noticed that the coffee and donuts accounted for a full 50% of his profits, he got the idea to start a donut shop, then called Open Kettle. Rosenberg'shop quickly became known for selling more varieties of donuts than any of his competitors. How many more? Well, in those days, donut shops basically just sold a few standard varieties of donuts. Rosenberg offered 52, one for every week of the year. And he made them on site and only sold them while they were still fresh at the low, low price of just 5 cents. People took notice of the 5 cent donuts, as they tend to do. And the business took off. In 1950, Open Kettle changed its name to the now familiar Dunkin' Donuts. According to most sources, the name came to Rosenberg after he saw how many patrons dunked their donuts in their coffee. After bouncing the idea off of a few of his fellow executives, the name was officially changed and the store was rebranded. That original location in Quincy, Massachusetts, the first to bear the Dunkin' Donuts moniker, remains open to this very day. Wicked. As Dunkin' Donuts became increasingly profitable, Rosenberg, along with his business partner, Harry Winkauer, opened and oversaw several other Dunkin' Donuts locations. But the two had a disagreement over whether or not to start franchising the chain. An idea Rosenberg was behind. Given the chain has over 12,000 locations today, we ass Winkauer left the business. The first franchise to Dunkin' Donuts opened in 1955 and the chain never looked back. Despite the name, Dunkin' Donuts sells a lot more than just donuts. This is mostly credited to the leadership of Bill Rosenberg'son, Bob, who has handed the reins to the company in 1963. Bob's innovations over the years included things But he also greatly expanded the menu. Under Bob, the company added new products But the most famous addition to the Dunkin' Donuts menu came in 1973, when the company started selling munchkins. At the time, the company just thought it was a fun way to use the leftover dough from the center of the donut. But people really Dunkin', the magic munchkin. According to the company, they now sell approximately a billion munchkins a year. You can't really dunk them, though, unless you want to burn your fingers. Dunkin' Donuts has sold a seemingly infinite variety of their eponymous donuts over the years. But some weren't as beloved as the munchkins. According to at least one survey, some of the least popular flavors in the franchise's history include maple cream, chocolate coconut, apple fritter, and Boston cream. And honestly, if those are their worst, Dunkies has a pretty solid batting average. But the single least popular donut variety in the history of Dunkin' Donuts was overwhelmingly the plain stick. The plain stick is basically an old-fashioned cake donut in a convenient stick shape. Everything else in the Dunkin' Display case looks So it's tough to get excited over a stick with frosting on it. If you saw television somewhere between 1981 and 1997, then you probably know the time to make the donuts guy. Time to make the donuts. Those five familiar words were the catchphrase of Fred the Baker, a mustachio Dunkin' Donuts pitchman, played in a series of commercials by a classically trained actor named Michael Vail. Fred the Baker was depicted as an exhausted but dutiful Dunkin' Donuts employee who drags himself out of bed at the crack of dawn every morning to get to the store and make fresh Dunkies for everyone. The campaign was wildly popular, and Fred became a fan favorite. Hey. Nice guys. What? Thank you. When the corporation decided to retire the character, they surveyed Dunkin' customers to try and gauge what the reaction would be. Turns out that reaction was, give Fred the respect he deserves, or we riot. To keep everyone happy in 1997, the company gave Fred an official retirement day. It included a parade in his honor through Dunkin' Donuts hometown of Boston, a series of commercials starring people Six million people showed up to thank Fred for making the donuts all those years, also for free donuts, probably. Actor Michael Vail passed away a few years later in 2005. Dunkin' Donuts has locations in 42 countries worldwide, even though they might not all be named Dunkin' Donuts. For instance, in Spain, the chain is called Dunkin' Coffee. We don't know what the whopper is called, because we didn't go into Burger King. But regardless of what they're called, international Dunkin' operations always makes an effort to reflect local tastes and cuisines in their donut selection. In China, for example, the company sells dry donuts, and they're not for example, the company sells dried pork and seaweed donut. Locations in several other Asian countries offer their customers mochi donuts, and the company's Indian branch offers a donut filled with rice pudding in celebration of Diwali. In 1990, Dunkin' Donuts was purchased by a company called Ally Domek PLC, which sounds Whether or not that's true, they also owned the ice cream parlor chain, Baskin Robbins, along with all 32 of their trademark flavors. The two independent chains were eventually merged into an entity called Dunkin' Brands, Inc, which then set out to place combined Dunkin' Donuts slash Baskin Robbins locations all over the country. Still, under the guidance of Bob Rosenberg, the company put stores in nontraditional locations and began having the donuts delivered rather than baked on site, eliminating the need for buildings large enough to house a kitchen. Wait, so where was Fred going every morning? To speed the expansion plans up, the decade also saw the company on a bit of an acquisition spree. They bought up the Donuts chain in 1991. And in 1990, they bought out Mr. Donut, the donut chain founded by Bill Rosenberg's old partner, Harry Winkauer. Talk about a dunk. As for Bill Rosenberg, he lived long enough to see the massive worldwide success his business became before heading to the great donut factory in the sky on September 20, 2002. In 2006, Dunkin' Donuts issued a press release announcing what the company itself called the most significant repositioning effort in the company's 55-year history. It made it sound And if you're the kind of person who gets excited about donut commercials, you were right. That something new was a new multimillion dollar advertising campaign expected to revolutionize the brand's position by focusing on how Dunkin' Donuts keeps busy Americans fueled and on the go, which is another way of saying, full of coffee and donuts and searching for a bathroom. Beneath all the bluster, the revolutionary new direction turned out to be four simple and now very familiar words. America runs on Dunkin'. The campaign was an astounding success. And they even did a run with a might be giants, the comedic indie rock band responsible for nearly every weird history joke about Constance and Obel. Between 2006 and 2008, Dunkin' Donuts produced 18 commercials featuring original music by the group. These included songs about plether, trees, and Starbucks' weird habit of combining the French and Italian languages on their menu. In 2011, they might be Giants co-founder John Flansberg recalled, it was an impossibly open-ended assignment and easily the most fun we've ever had working for television folks. But those weren'the only Giants Dunkin' managed to stick into their commercials. Oscar winner Ben Affleck is from Boston. The fact he rarely works into conversations and interviews. Because of that association, Dunkin' decided he'd make the perfect pitchman for the company. And it wasn't a leap. Affleck has frequently been photographed by paparazzi while carrying Dunkin' products to the point where an exhausted looking Affleck, holding a cup of Dunkies, became a meme in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first commercial debut during the 2023 Super Bowl and featured the somewhat A-lister working the drive-through window of a Boston location while wearing an America Runs on Dunkin' shirt and leaning into his Boston accent. The commercial ends when he gets caught by his extremely famous wife, Jennifer Lopez. Lot of star power in that donut commercial. Since then, they've p Speaking of running on Dunkin', in 2018, Dunkin' teamed up with Boston-based shoe manufacturer Soccany to make Dunkin' running shoes. The limited edition sneaker, which was based on the long-distance cult favorite, Kinvara 10, was promoted in connection with the Boston Marathon and sold out in record time. You have to get up earlier than Fred to snag a limited edition Subsequent editions have designs featuring things And just to really drive the connection home, the shoes come packaged in a custom shoe box resembling Dunkin's iconic donut box. It's as if KC Affleck's character in Goodwill Hunting were a shoe. Okay, so although we've been saying Dunkin' Donuts this whole video, the truth is the beloved donut franchise is no longer known by that name. As of September of 2018, they officially dropped the Donuts part of their name and are now, according to them, just Dunkin'. Yeah, whatever you say, Dunkies! According to the company, they were selling a lot more drinks than donuts, so they wanted to pivot to concentrate more on the beverage portion of their business. And most people didn't mind the change, because only weirdos call it Dunkin' Donuts These days, every last business you interact with tries to get you to sign up for some kind of online account. And Dunkin' was no exception. Hackers breached to the accounts and stole money and information in 2015, and again in 2018. According to a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Leticia James, the company failed to adequately inform 20,000 customers about the first hack and a whopping 300,000 about the second one. Dunkin' denied these claims, but settled the case in September of 2020, agreeing to notify customers about the breaches, refund any lost money, make efforts to prevent future cyber attacks, and pay a hefty $650,000 in penalties and costs. James said of the settlement, For years, Dunkin' hid the truth and failed to protect the security of its customers, who were left paying the bill. It's time to make amends and finally fill the holes in Dunkin''s cybersecurity. Fill the holes. Yeah, we saw what you did there. Of all the East Coast, West Coast rivalries, none is more important than the beef between Dunkin' and Starbucks, and there's a lot on the line. The two chains control more than half the U. S. 's entire retail coffee market combined. When it comes to market share, Starbucks is absolutely trouncing its Boston-based competitor, with 25,000 domestic locations compared to Dunkin's 9,500. But when it comes to how much their respective customers Marketing data from 2018 showed that more than a third of adults in Seattle said they had patronized Starbucks within the past 30 days. That sounds pretty damn impressive. As long as no one tells you that over in Boston, a whopping 47% of adults, nearly half of the entire adult population, said they'd patronized a Dunkin' in the past 30 days. N At least one commentator for the Seattle Times has suggested that while the people of his city do love Starbucks, they just don't feel the same sense of regional pride in the franchise that Bostonians feel for Dunkies. Fred the Baker would be proud. So what do you think? What's your favorite Dunkin' Donuts flavor? Let us know in the comments below and while you're at it, check out some of these other videos from Weird History Food.