How Krispy Kreme conquered France

Resistance to "Hot Donuts Now" is futile. Sorry not sorry, Frenchies.

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Around my house, Saturday mornings are for donuts. Perhaps even as you are reading this very missive — assuming you read it shortly after I sent it out — we’re out prowling the mean streets of suburban Atlanta, Georgia looking for donuts. In most cases, we avoid the big-box brands — sorry, Dunkin — and go instead for the artisanal small-batch craft donuts, where they’ll happily inject roughly three gallons of Bavarian kreme into each donut pillowcase, or top a donut with enough sticky caramel to stop a charging rhino cold. Independent businesses are a joy and a treasure, and you should frequent them as often as possible.

That said … if the “Hot Donuts Now” light is on at Krispy Kreme, brother, it’s time to throw down.

You want to see cars wheeling bootlegger turns in the middle of six-lane roads, illuminate that “Hot Donuts Now” light around 11 p.m. on a Friday night. That thing is a shining beacon, an alluring siren call to all who desire three full days’ worth of sugar in one warm, pillowy package. I’ve never maimed anyone while in pursuit of a hot Krispy Kreme, but that’s only because the opportunity hasn’t yet presented itself.

So when I saw a New York Times headline this week — “Hot Glazed Doughnuts on the Menu, and Parisians Can’t Get Enough” — all I could do was nod in weary agreement. They got you too, didn’t they, mon frère.

The story details the opening of the first Krispy Kreme store in France, a full-on American-style, definitely-not-staged social media spectacle with hungry influencers camping out the night before, then streaming their treasures to other French youths, who in turn descended on the shop. The Krispy Kreme is located on Passage de la Canopée, which is a so much prettier address than, like, “Tennessee Street” or “Route 301” or wherever the hell most American ones are sited. It’s a couple blocks from the Louvre and Notre Dame Cathedral, housed in a building that once hosted a Michelin-starred chef’s restaurant. You don’t need a degree in urban planning — or French literature — to see the metaphor at work here.

The Times piece notes that Krispy Kreme’s arrival in Paris is part of a growing French post-pandemic fascination with quick-delivery, photogenic, on-demand American fast food culture. If you’re an aficionado of French fine dining — ever-present wine, leisurely conversation, art de la table — this graf from the Times will freeze your donuts:

“In the spring, Popeye’s fried chicken drew huge crowds in Paris when it opened the first of 350 restaurants planned across France. Wendy’s has announced plans to set up shop in France. Burger King, KFC, Starbucks, Domino’s Pizza, Chipotle, Steak ’n Shake, Carl’s Jr. and Five Guys have long had toeholds, but they are rapidly expanding their footprints with plans for hundreds of new locations across the country.”

(Not going to lie, watching Popeye’s servers — legendary for their DGAF attitude, particularly at the Atlanta airport — taking on persnickety, arrogant French diners is the kind of bloody cross-cultural conflict that would keep me happy for an entire month. Alas, I doubt there will be any kind of foreign-exchange program in the Popeye’s infrastructure, but it’s Popeye’s, so who knows?)

The first, and probably correct, way to look at this is that “popular” culture is flattening and homogenizing us as a people; that an emphasis on social media virality and meaningless, ephemeral TikTok fame is an even cheaper sugar high than a Krispy Kreme donut; and these are all symptoms of a culture that’s lost touch with its own history and unable to produce anything of lasting merit itself.

The second, of course, is hell yeah Krispy Kreme rules. We will accept no rebuttals.

Like rock n’ roll, Krispy Kreme is a uniquely American blend of several distinct influences: the round shape of bagels, the light texture of New Orleans beignets, the sticky glaze from Heaven itself. Also like rock n’ roll, the donuts’ original creator — a riverboat cook named Joseph LeBoeuf — didn’t live long enough to profit from the worldwide success of his creation.

Founder Vernon Rudolph, who bought the recipe off LeBoeuf, originally established a store in Paducah, Kentucky, then moved to Nashville and, finally in 1937, to Winston-Salem, N.C., where Krispy Kreme’s world headquarters remain today. (The close proximity of the donut empire and the cigarette industry is no coincidence.) According to corporate legend, Vernon initially began by selling his donuts en masse to stores, but when the scent of hot donuts cooking between midnight and 4 a.m. took to the air, he soon set up a window to hand out hot donuts to anyone who showed up in the small hours. Vernon most likely cut the hole in the original store’s wall himself, but I’d just as easily believe that hungry donut-lovers gnawed their way in through the brick.

From there, Krispy Kreme hewed to all the proper steps of American corporate myth-building, starting with a “secret formula” that’s “locked away in a vault.” Secret menu items and exclusive Krispy Kreme offerings dot the country. (Hit the Krispy Kreme in Concord, N.C., get yourself an Original Glazed milkshake — served with a tiny donut around the straw — and thank me when you awaken from your sugar coma.)

Plus, Krispy Kreme’s Donut Theater — the visible-to-the-public process of running donuts through the glaze waterfall — is strangely hypnotic. (If you feel a twinge of sadness when the workers grab a half-cooked misfit donut off the line and toss it in the trash, you’re my kind of people.)

So what you have now is a concoction so popular it’s literally bootlegged, Smokey and the Bandit-style, across state lines. (Keep your eyes on the high school kid who shows up at school every morning with a box of 12 donuts to flip for a 200 percent profit. That kid’s either going to be a billionaire, a felon, or both.) And, clearly, it’s well on its way to conquering the planet.

Look, as a company, Krispy Kreme isn’t anywhere close to perfect. Between some light accounting trickeration, a little environmental scandal, franchisee complaints and other costs-of-doing-business sins that accompany any company’s exponential growth, Krispy Kreme has made its share of corporate eff-ups. And then there was the the time that a Krispy Kreme franchisee in the U.K. tried to create and brand what it called a “Klub.” You can probably guess why that one jumped the tracks pretty quickly.

But if you can separate the art from the artist, well, there’s a whole box of warm donuts with your name etched in the glaze. Somehow, in one of the great failures of my youth, I never managed to see if I could house an entire dozen at one sitting. But I’ve been tempted, oh have I been tempted. And you want one, or five, right now, don’t you?

Last thing: if your donuts do stay uneaten long enough to cool to room temperature, follow my dad’s time-tested move: Eight seconds in the microwave. No more, no less. You’re welcome.

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Read this: ‘Among the Bros,’ Max Marshall

A deeply-reported story about fraternity dudes at a gorgeous Southern campus running a drug ring out of their off-campus apartment, shot through with naive arrogance, privilege, bone-deep stupidity and murder? Yeah, this book hit all the marks I demand in my literature. It’s one of the best I’ve read this year. If you have children who will one day attend college, read this book and know what they’re getting into. If you have children who already attended college, read this book and don’t ask them any questions about what they did there. Grab “Among The Bros” and all our other recommendations over at the Flashlight & A Biscuit bookstore at Bookshop.

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Song of the Week: ‘Lawyers, Guns and Money,’ Shooter Jennings

The farther we proceed in this world, the farther we get from the greatness that was Warren Zevon, the Southern California singer-songwriter who chronicled an array of degenerates, criminals, scoundrels and romantics over the course of his underappreciated career. After Zevon fell short of induction into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame — an honor he would have loathed but nonetheless deserves — Shooter Jennings performed and released an entire live album of Zevon songs, leading off with the magnificent “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” Put this on and imagine what you’d grab and where you’d go if you knew the cops were on their way to your place, right this moment. And check out the ever-growing Flashlight & A Biscuit Spotify playlist.

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That’s a wrap on this week, friends. Thanks for reading, and an extra-special thanks to all of you who’ve joined up in the last few weeks. Let’s keep rolling on into the holiday season together!

—Jay
Land Cat, Georgia

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This is issue #110 of Flashlight & A Biscuit. Check out all the past issues right here. Feel free to email me with your thoughts, tips and advice. If you’re new around here, jump right to our most-read stories, or check out some of our recent hits:

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