| 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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| To: gladman who wrote (988) | 1/31/2007 1:36:11 PM | | From: Jon Koplik | | | | WSJ -- Krispy Kreme Continues Its Turnaround Efforts .............................
January 31, 2007
Krispy Kreme Continues Its Turnaround Efforts
Plans to Eliminate Trans Fats, Introduce Lower-Calorie Doughnuts
By RICK BROOKS
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. still is in a "turnaround" but "making some progress" toward finding new sources of growth and resolving a string of accounting and managerial woes that have battered the doughnut maker, said Daryl G. Brewster, Krispy Kreme president and chief executive.
Speaking at the company's first annual meeting of shareholders since May 2004, Mr. Brewster spent more than 45 minutes outlining a series of moves underway are that aimed at eventually restoring Krispy Kreme to its past glory. "We are making the move from survival mode to stability," he said at the M.C. Benton Jr. Convention and Civic Center, located just a few miles from the company founder's first shop.
For example, Krispy Kreme plans to introduce within the next two months a whole-wheat version of its signature glazed doughnut, which will have 180 calories, or 20 fewer calories than the traditional version. Shareholders munched on samples of the whole-wheat doughnuts before today's meeting, and some packed leftovers into cardboard boxes to take home. The new doughnuts have a slight maple flavor but seem just as sweet as the fried sugar bombs that made Krispy Kreme famous and propelled it to years of rapid growth.
Krispy Kreme also is working to eliminate trans fats from its doughnuts, though no timeline has been set for doing so, Mr. Brewster said. Meanwhile, the company is increasingly experimenting with variations in store format and size in order to align sales more closely with operating costs.
Krispy Kreme is battling to reverse a downturn in sales that began in 2004 and has continued over the past several months as the company aggressively thins its ranks of underperforming stores under Mr. Brewster, who was hired last March. Krispy Kreme now has roughly 300 so-called factory stores, which function as retail shops and wholesalers to other locations, down from 396 in early 2005.
In the nine months ended Oct. 29, revenue at Krispy Kreme fell 17% to $349 million from $421.1 million a year earlier, reflecting the store closings. But average weekly sales per store have begun rising, making Krispy Kreme executives optimistic that a long list of remedies ranging from heavy promotion of seasonal doughnuts to trying to patch up relations with franchisees is starting to gain traction.
For the same period, Krispy Kreme posted a net loss of $17.8 million, or 29 cents a share, sharply narrower than a year-earlier loss was swelled by lease terminations and other costs related to the company's problems.
Krispy Kreme shareholders rejected a proposal by Courage Capital Management LLC, a Nashville, Tenn., asset-management firm holding a 6.9% stake in Krispy Kreme as of Dec. 8, that would've required directors to face election yearly. Krispy Kreme currently uses three-year staggered terms.
Courage contended that putting directors up for a vote at every annual meeting would likely make them more engaged and responsive, but Krispy Kreme said directors elected under the current system are just as accountable to shareholders.
The proposal was supported by about 32% of outstanding Krispy Kreme shares, far short of the two-thirds needed for it to pass.
Krispy Kreme still faces ongoing probes by the Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, plus Internal Revenue Service scrutiny of its income-tax returns for certain years. Mr. Brewster said the company is cooperating fully.
After catching up on its last overdue securities filing earlier this week, Krispy Kreme plans to hold its next shareholder meeting June 4.
Write to Rick Brooks at rick.brooks@wsj.com
Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
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| To: Jon Koplik who wrote (987) | 5/19/2008 11:28:08 PM | | From: Jon Koplik | | | | NYT -- parent of Marble Slab Creamery & MaggieMoo’s (ice cream) near bankruptcy .................................
May 20, 2008
Owner of Bill Blass Faces Cash Shortage After Acquisition
By MICHAEL BARBARO
The fast-growing buyout firm that owns the fashion house Bill Blass, the retailer Athlete’s Foot and the ice cream chain MaggieMoo’s appears to be on the verge of collapse.
NexCen Brands, a little known firm that owns many high-profile brands, said on Monday that it faced a severe cash squeeze and warned that there is “substantial doubt” that it will remain in business.
The company, which dismissed its chief financial officer two months ago, said that its 2007 financial statements could no longer be relied upon and that it was investigating its financial reporting practices.
NexCen, which earns revenue from 1,900 franchised stores, said it might try to sell off some, if not all, of its brands. That could put eight chains — including Marble Slab Creamery, Pretzel Time, Pretzelmaker, Great American Cookies, Shoebox New York and Waverly home furnishings — up for grabs. And it could put the future of Bill Blass, an influential clothing label sold at high-end stores like Saks Fifth Avenue, in doubt.
NexCen’s stock plunged 77 percent on Monday, to 58 cents a share, after its announcement.
NexCen appears to be the latest victim of a tight credit market and a slowdown in consumer spending, which have helped push nearly a dozen big chains — like Linens ’n Things and The Sharper Image — into bankruptcy over the last year.
NexCen said it must repay about $21 million it borrowed to finance the $93.7 million acquisition of Great American Cookies by October, leaving it with little cash to operate. The company had tried to refinance the debt but, with banks reluctant to lend, it failed to find a quick solution.
But the economy is not the company’s only problem. NexCen said it had previously failed to disclose the $21 million debt — and other financial information, which it did not specify — to investors in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It dismissed its chief financial officer, David B. Meister, in mid-March. And the company said its audit committee had hired lawyers to carry out “an independent review” of its conduct.
NexCen was created in 2006 with an unusual business plan. Unlike most buyout firms, which hope to sell off acquisitions quickly for a profit, it intended to create a conglomerate whose disparate divisions in food, fashion, furniture and sports would play off one another.
The idea was for Bill Blass designers to make athletic clothing to be sold at The Athlete’s Foot, or for Athlete’s Foot store operators to branch out and open a MaggieMoo’s or a Pretzel Time.
Robert W. D’Loren, the chief executive of NexCen Brands, has called it a “think tank” approach to building brands that cuts across industries. No less a retail star than Marvin Traub, the former chief executive of Bloomingdale’s, gave his stamp of approval, joining NexCen’s board.
Mr. D’Loren has pioneered the business of buying and expanding consumer brands that did not own their manufacturing plants or stores, minimizing investors’ risk. He previously worked at or closely with companies like Iconix and UCC Capital, which are structured similarly to NexCen.
Most of NexCen’s revenue comes from royalties — from franchisees, in the case of The Athlete’s Foot, or licensees, in the case of Bill Blass. NexCen lost $4.6 million in 2007. But it had revenue of $34 million, up from nearly $2 million in 2006.
Analysts have become skeptical of the company’s strategy and leadership. “We believe management credibility has hit, incredibly, a new low,” Eric Beder, an analyst at Brean Murray, Carret & Company, said Monday in a note to investors. “Investors should avoid the stock until there is some semblance of normalcy and credibility at the company.”
Mr. D’Loren did not return phone messages Monday. The company held a conference call on Monday, during which Mr. D’Loren read a prepared statement, but did not take questions.
The troubles at NexCen have riveted New York’s fashion community, because of the uncertainty regarding Bill Blass. NexCen had promised to revive the clothing brand, which has struggled since Mr. Blass’s death in 2002.
Ronald L. Frasch, president of Saks Fifth Avenue, said that until now, there had been no outward signs of trouble at Bill Blass or NexCen. “From our side, it’s all been very positive,” he said. “This is a little bit of a surprise.”
But he said that “re-establishing a brand such as Bill Blass at that level takes deep pockets.”
“It’s a lot of expense going out before it comes back in,” he said.
Emanuel Weintraub, president and chief executive officer of Emanuel Weintraub Associates, a retail consulting firm, said NexCen “has a lot of brands that should be doing well.”
“If they are running out of money,” he said, “they are not running the company well.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company. |
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| From: Jon Koplik | 12/8/2008 6:48:00 PM | | | | | | I bought my first "no trans fat" KKD doughnuts yesterday .......................................
(First time I have managed to get to a KKD store in several years.)
(We went to the one on 167th St. in Miami, FL.)
If anything, I thought they tasted better than the old ones.
And, I was expecting the new ones to "leak" cooking oil on to the box worse than the old ones, but ... nope !
Wasn't part of the whole point of trans fat to give a sort of "solidity" to the fat / oil content of food items ?
Anyway ... after all of the "vociferous" complaining by the food industry, it does seem that using trans fats was not necessary.
Jon.
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