| To: Jon Koplik who wrote (978) | 5/9/2006 8:37:50 PM | | From: Jon Koplik | | | | Dow Jones News -- Krispy Kreme In Deal To Bring Stores To Middle East ...........................
May 9, 2006 5:43 p.m.
Krispy Kreme In Deal To Bring Stores To Middle East
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. (KKD) has inked a deal with a Kuwait-based company that will bring approximately 100 of the doughnut chain's stores to the Middle East over the next five years.
The agreement, which gives Americana Group 100% ownership of the franchise in the region, calls for the first Krispy Kreme outlet to open in Kuwait by early fall.
Shares of Krispy Kreme ended the regular session up 2.4% at $10.34.
-William Spain; 415-439-6456; AskNewswires@dowjones.com
Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
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| To: Jon Koplik who wrote (978) | 6/6/2006 10:53:40 PM | | From: Jon Koplik | | | | UPDATE: Krispy Kreme Awards Franchise To Hong Kong Group .....................
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
June 6, 2006 3:08 p.m.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)--Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. (KKD), recovering from internal accounting problems that led to investigations and the ouster of its chief executive, said Tuesday it was again looking abroad to reach new markets.
The Winston-Salem, N.C., snack maker said it has awarded rights to Krispy Kreme Hong Kong Ltd. to establish sales outlets on the prosperous islands of Hong Kong and Macau. The owners of the franchise already operate other restaurants in Hong Kong and Vietnam.
"This development agreement represents another step forward in the company's turnaround," Krispy Kreme President and Chief Executive Daryl Brewster said in a prepared statement.
The first store is expected to open in Hong Kong this fall, according to Krispy Kreme.
Last month, Krispy Kreme said it awarded Middle East development rights to a group that would open 100 locations in the next five years in Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In both China and the Middle East, Krispy Kreme will have no ownership position in the franchisee.
Krispy Kreme also has stores in Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico and South Korea.
While Krispy Kreme said it sees international markets as a growth opportunity, the company has been selling off its ownership stake in its ventures with foreign partners.
In November, Krispy Kreme sold its 35% equity in the partner developing markets in Australia and New Zealand. A month later, the company agreed to sell its 35% stake to its partner in the United Kingdom.
But in April 2005, Krispy Kreme was forced to take over its Canadian developer's approximately 60% share when KremeKo Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection.
As of January, 68 Krispy Kreme stores operated internationally, up from 37 the previous January.
Krispy Kreme continues to be under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors.
A special committee of independent directors blamed much of Krispy Kreme's financial problems on former chief executive officer Scott Livengood and another executive.
Krispy Kreme shares recently fell 4 cents, or 0.5% to $8.75.
Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
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| To: Jon Koplik who wrote (978) | 7/12/2006 12:13:54 AM | | From: Jon Koplik | | | | WSJ -- SEC Weighs Tougher Stance On Naked Short-Selling ......................................
July 12, 2006
SEC Weighs Tougher Stance On Naked Short-Selling
By KARA SCANNELL
The Securities and Exchange Commission, responding to criticism that it hasn't done enough to curb naked short-selling, is expected to propose changes to a current rule that would reduce the number of open short positions in stocks.
The proposed amendments to Regulation SHO, a collection of rules on short-selling, come amid heightened attention to the legitimate trading practice of making bearish bets on firms. Short-selling is when a trader borrows shares then sells them with the hope the stock drops, so he can buy it back later at a lower price, locking in a profit. More controversial is naked short-selling, which is when a trader never intends to borrow shares to cover his position. Naked short-selling is illegal in most instances, except when done by a market-maker to maintain liquidity in a stock.
The SEC adopted Reg SHO, in part, to reduce naked short-selling. Since it took effect in January 2005, the number of companies that have open short positions has dropped by some estimates as much as 20%, although critics have said that is insufficient.
Recently, allegations of naked short-selling and manipulative trading have caught the attention of Capitol Hill, where two senators called for stepped-up scrutiny by the Justice Department. Some corporate chiefs have engaged in a public-relations war, railing against short-sellers that have targeted their stock, and the SEC has launched at least one investigation into potential market manipulation involving short-sellers.
Reg SHO requires brokers to locate a security to later borrow to cover the short position. It also established threshold lists of stocks that meet certain conditions, such as more than half of 1% of its shares outstanding haven't been delivered to the counterparty on the date they were due for five consecutive business days. Once a security is on a threshold list, a broker with new short positions needs to close out any failed trades within 13 business days. The idea is to reduce outstanding shorts on those stocks.
The SEC included a grandfather provision that exempted delivery failures that existed before a company became a threshold security, meaning open failed positions that existed before a company made the list remain. At the time, the SEC said it did so out of concern it might create volatility through a short squeeze.
Today at an open meeting, the SEC is expected to vote to amend Reg SHO and eliminate the grandfather clause, which could benefit heavily shorted companies. Eliminating the grandfather clause would force brokers to buy in some positions on threshold-listed securities that were made before the companies made the list. The SEC is also weighing whether to change a provision that allows market makers to have naked short positions. If the changes to the rule are voted, as expected, they will go out for public comment for at least 30 days.
Write to Kara Scannell at kara.scannell@wsj.com
Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
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| To: Jon Koplik who wrote (981) | 8/11/2006 6:00:54 PM | | From: EL KABONG!!! | | | | Here in Arizona, all Krispy Kreme outlets closed their doors this morning, as the franchisee for Arizona and part of New Mexico went belly up and filed for bankruptcy. Employees were unpaid for their final hours (or days) of employment, as the franchisee literally does not have the resources to pay them at the moment. Krispy Kreme officials said they hope to be able to work with the franchisee to resolve the financial problems. However, that said, Krispy Kreme products are no longer available in Arizona and parts of New Mexico.
EK!!! |
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| To: Ivan Inkling who wrote (983) | 8/19/2006 2:54:53 PM | | From: EL KABONG!!! | | | | To the best of my knowledge, the bankruptcy filing affected all Krispy Kreme outlets in Arizona and New Mexico only. The bankrupt franchisee may have had other outlets in other states (say Colorado) that were also shuttered, but I don't don't know that for a fact. I only heard some rumor and innuendo to that extent. As far as Krispy Kreme itself, they had indicated in a statement to the press that that they would work with the franchisee to try to resolve the financial problems.
I believe that all the shuttered locations remain closed as of right now. I'm not aware that any have reopened yet, though it is possible. Neither the franchisee nor Krispy Kreme has been in the news much since the initial filing.
EK!!! |
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| From: gladman | 8/31/2006 11:31:16 PM | | | | | | | From today's 8-K: "In July 2005, Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts was sued by one of its area developers, Sweet Traditions, and its Illinois corporate entity, Sweet Traditions of Illinois, in the Circuit Court for St. Clair County, Illinois. The case was subsequently removed to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. This litigation is described in the Registrant's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 30, 2005 under "Item 3. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS âEuro” Litigation âEuro” Franchisee Litigation." A settlement was reached between the parties and on August 25, 2006 a joint stipulation for dismissal of the litigation with prejudice was filed with the court. The court dismissed the case on August 28, 2006. The resolution of this matter will not result in any accounting charge to the Registrant." |
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| To: gladman who wrote (985) | 10/20/2006 9:37:32 PM | | From: Jon Koplik | | | | Dow Jones News -- Dunkin' Donuts Hopes Southerners Will Dump Krispy Kreme .....................
October 20, 2006
Dunkin' Donuts Hopes Southerners Will Dump Krispy Kreme
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
FRANKLIN, Tenn. (AP)--When asked how he got his own Dunkin' Donuts store, Joe Rando holds up the afternoon cup of coffee he's just poured for himself.
"Lifelong Dunkin' fanatic," he said.
When the Maine native moved South with his former company to the Nashville area a couple years ago, he found he had to do without his favorite treat.
"I sort of woke up one morning and said, 'There aren't any Dunkin' Donuts here. Why is that?' So I made a phone call," Rando said.
From its first store in Quincy, Mass., Dunkin' Donuts has become the quintessential Northeastern doughnut shop, with working-class credentials and obsessive customers.
But now the Canton, Mass.-based chain plans to expand south and west across the country, and that begs the question: Will Southerners, with their long-standing love of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc.'s (KKD) sugar-glaze, find room for another doughnut?
Rando is in charge of 12 Nashville-area stores that will serve as a prototype for the company's expansion, testing everything from new products to store appearance.
Dunkin' Donuts currently has about 4,400 stores in 36 U.S. states, but the majority are in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic region. (There are another 1,700 international Dunkin' Donuts stores in 29 countries.)
Company executives hope to triple the total number of U.S. stores by 2020.
"Our objective is to take the brand national," Dunkin' Donuts brand officer Robert Rodriguez said. "We have been a very successful super-regional chain."
But parent Dunkin' Brands Inc. is invading the South with a different sort of doughnut - thicker and cakier than the traditional Southern treat from Krispy Kreme, which is lighter, sugar-glazed and served hot.
Executives at both companies say their doughnuts have a universal appeal, but Rando says there is no middle ground.
"It's like the Red Sox and the Yankees - you like one or the other," he said.
Stan Parker, senior vice president of marketing for North Carolina-based Krispy Kreme, said many Southerners have grown up with their doughnuts and think of a trip to Krispy Kreme as more than just breakfast or a snack.
"For many people, Krispy Kreme has been part of their lives for a long time," he said.
Rosemary Evans was clearly in the Krispy Kreme camp as she shared a dozen doughnuts with her children on a recent Saturday morning.
"Dunkin' Donuts just don't have much flavor," said Evans, who grew up in Alabama. "These are just more moist. You can fold them up and stuff a whole one in your mouth."
Dunkin' Donuts fan Jack Lehnhart disagrees. "Wax doughnuts," he says about Krispy Kremes.
Lehnhart, an Ohio native, and his wife Nancy brought their out-of-town guests, Jo-Ann and Bob Ruel, to the Dunkin' Donuts store in Franklin before the Ruels started driving home to Chatham, Mass.
"When we're on the highway, we're always looking for the DD sign," Jo-Ann Ruel said.
Josh Owens, an equity analyst who follows the restaurant industry for Morningstar Inc. in Chicago, said Krispy Kreme is still a relatively small chain compared to Dunkin'.
"Dunkin' Donuts has a reasonably strong brand. It's a brand a lot of people are familiar with. It's not necessarily going to have the fad element that Krispy Kreme had with its expansion," he said.
Krispy Kreme went public in 2000 and became a national sensation as it expanded across the country. Its stock price and profits climbed rapidly, but then crashed in 2004.
Krispy Kreme executives at the time blamed the low-carb craze for declining sales, but the company had serious problems - it faces shareholder lawsuits and investigations alleging it engaged in faulty accounting - and analysts said it grew too fast. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. recently hired two former tobacco executives who are expected to help the company clear some of its problems.
Dunkin' Donuts executives say that won't happen to them because they plan to expand slowly and with a broader line of products.
"We're very different," Rodriguez said. "Our brand and our model is very different. We're a full line of baked goods. We're renowned for our coffee, which is a major, major player."
In fact, Dunkin's coffee may be more important to its business prospects than its cakey doughnuts. While Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) leads the growing $11 billion industry, there's still plenty of room, Owens said.
Dunkin' Donuts' blue-collar customer base varies so much from the more upscale patrons at Starbucks that the two companies practically operate in separate markets, he said.
Dunkin' Donuts believes some of its other products - bagels, breakfast sandwiches, cookies, flavored coffee - will attract Southern customers, even if they stay loyal to Krispy Kremes.
"We have Starbucks employees that come from across the street," Rando said. "They aren't shy about why they're there. They'll say 'Hey, we like our coffee better, but you've got an awesome menu'."
Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
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| To: gladman who wrote (985) | 10/26/2006 11:33:31 PM | | From: Jon Koplik | | | | Off topic : NYT -- Slabs Are Joining Scoops in Ice Cream Retailing ..........................
October 26, 2006
Slabs Are Joining Scoops in Ice Cream Retailing
By KATE MURPHY
With Baskin-Robbins and Dairy Queen, not to mention thousands of independent scoop shops, there are plenty of places to satisfy a craving for ice cream. But three companies say there is still room for something different — their premium ice creams, served with a flourish.
The three are competing to be to ice cream what Starbucks is to coffee — a ubiquitous chain offering a high-priced, high-quality version of a relatively mundane product.
The companies, Marble Slab Creamery, Cold Stone Creamery and MaggieMoo’s International, sell various flavors of premium ice cream, which is defined by the industry as having more than 12 percent butterfat. Moreover, they allow customers to choose from an assortment of “mix-ins” like crumbled cookies, candies, fruits and nuts. Employees then blend the ingredients into the ice cream on a cold granite or marble slab before packing it into a cup or freshly baked waffle cone. The cost escalates with the number of mix-ins and can easily top $5 for a medium serving.
“These guys are all hoping to be the next Starbucks,” said Donna Barry, a dairy consultant who analyzes the ice cream industry for the market research company Packaged Facts in New York.
Part of the experience is waiting in line and watching employees prepare concoctions. “It’s entertainment,” Ms. Barry said. “I myself get intrigued by what other people order,” like peanut butter ice cream with bananas, marshmallows and brownie chunks.
But in an already crowded market, it remains unclear whether there is a sustainable niche for high-end ice cream, much less one that can support a store on every corner.
Following the Starbucks model, the three chains are densely situating their stores, particularly Cold Stone. Founded in 1988, with its headquarters in Scottsdale, Ariz., Cold Stone has 1,400 franchises in the United States, Japan and South Korea — most opened in the last five years. A former Procter & Gamble sales manager, Douglas A. Ducey, was named chief executive in 2000 to lead the expansion.
“I saw an opportunity to reinvent a stagnant category like what happened with coffee,” he said.
Marble Slab, based in Houston, and MaggieMoo’s of Columbia, Md., have also pursued rapid growth strategies in the last five years. Marble Slab, which opened its first store in 1983, now has 371 franchises in the United States, Canada and the United Arab Emirates, with another 220 under development. Started in 1989, MaggieMoo’s currently has 190 franchises in the United States with an additional 150 under development.
“These guys are definitely trying to saturate the market,” said Darren Tristano, managing director of Technomic, a food service research and consulting firm in Chicago. “It’s all a game of beating the other guy to the best locations.”
Americans spend about $21 billion a year on ice cream, according to the International Dairy Foods Association. That amounts to 1.6 billion gallons of ice cream, or 21.5 quarts a person a year. Almost two-thirds of that ice cream is eaten away from home.
“It’s not a small category,” said Harry Balzar, president of the NPD Group, a market research company in Port Washington, N.Y., but one that has remained flat for more than a decade and is “not likely to grow.”
To succeed, Cold Stone, Marble Slab and MaggieMoo’s need to take customers from the market leaders Dairy Queen and Baskin-Robbins and the more than 15,000 other independent and chain ice cream shops scattered across the country. This includes Ben & Jerry’s and Häagen-Dazs, which are steadily adding locations, though their focus is more on grocery store sales.
“The Cold Stones and the like have to take business from competitors or increase the frequency of customer visits,” Mr. Balzar said.
Demand was arguably high as several people waited in line on a recent weekday afternoon at a Marble Slab Creamery in Houston. “I was on my way home from jury duty and figured I’d use the $6 they paid me to buy an ice cream,” said Lee Beauchamp, a petroleum marketer, who was enjoying a double dip of dark chocolate coconut and birthday-cake-flavor ice cream.
But Howard Waxman, editor of The Ice Cream Reporter, an industry newsletter, questioned how much of an appetite there is for expensive customized ice cream. “People often have very personal or psychological associations with ice cream,” Mr. Waxman said. “They’ll try something new but they tend to go back to the kind of ice cream they grew up eating.”
That is the way it was for Tony Green, a management consultant in Chicago, who tried Cold Stone and Marble Slab once or twice because he said his two children “are all about mixing as much candy into their ice cream as possible.” Even so, the family favorite is still an independent, old-fashioned ice cream parlor called Margie’s Candies that they have gone to for years. “It’s a throw-back nostalgia kind of place,” Mr. Green said.
Such loyalties and perhaps market saturation might explain why sales at Cold Stone stores open for more than a year were down for the first time last year, by 6.6 percent, and are down 7 percent so far this year. Including revenue from newly opened stores, the company expects sales to reach $465 million this year, up 46 percent from last year. Mindful of the decline in sales at existing stores, Mr. Ducey said Cold Stone would slow its expansion. “We first wanted to secure premier locations and build awareness and now we are going to focus on the amount of product sold,” he said.
Marble Slab, which has pursued a more measured growth strategy, estimates this year’s sales will be $90 million, up from $75 million last year, with sales at stores open for more than a year increasing 3 percent.
“Our primary focus has always been on trying to offer the highest-quality product — we only open new stores when it makes sense,” said Ronald Hankamer, Marble Slab’s president and chief executive.
MaggieMoo’s projects $50 million in sales this year, up from $43 million last year. The company would not release sales at stores open for more than a year. It has dropped to 416 from 169 in 2004 on Entrepreneur Magazine’s ranking of the top 500 franchise opportunities. Cold Stone and Marble Slab have climbed in the 2006 rankings, to 24 and 297, respectively. MaggieMoo’s closed six underperforming stores in Bangkok this year and canceled plans for further overseas expansion.
Still, the three chains are hardly hurting for franchisees. Cold Stone, for example, received 25,000 applications last year.
“A lot of people want to get into the business because it sounds like fun,” said Mr. Waxman of The Ice Cream Reporter. And it is relatively inexpensive to buy in, with $200,000 to $450,000 in upfront costs and fees plus 6 percent royalties on sales. By contrast, purchasing a McDonald’s franchise requires a $506,000 to $1.6 million initial investment plus a minimum of 12.5 percent royalties on sales.
The majority of franchisees at Cold Stone, Marble Slab and MaggieMoo’s own more than one location and as many as 11. “It’s how you create economies of scale so you can increase your margins,” said Rudy Puig, who owns three Cold Stone stores in Miami, and plans to buy another next year.
But he said the real reason he was in the ice cream business is “my kids used to cry if we didn’t stop for ice cream.” Now that is not a problem.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company. |
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| To: Jon Koplik who wrote (987) | 10/27/2006 12:46:16 AM | | From: gladman | | | | | the experience at cold stone was incredibly annoying... 8 people in front of me in line and each took about 4-5 minutes to complete the order with all the stirring and adding cake and bananas and all the other bullshit. i don't know how they stay in business. |
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