The Great Philadelphia Krispy Kreme Mystery

It’s one of America’s quintessential culinary delights: a hot and fresh Krispy Kreme donut, warm and dripping with glaze. One eats one, and immediately wants to inhale another. Such is life. Such is life, that is, except for in the City of Brotherly Love. Oh, you can get donuts aplenty there – Dunkin Donuts and Wawa flourish with sales of the fried delights, and then there is Federal Donuts, which has a cult-like following. But, yet, the city center of Philadelphia is devoid of Krispy Kreme franchises. To get to one, you have to head to the suburbs – Bensalem, Havertown, Collingswood (New Jersey), and New Castle (Delaware).

Will Krispy Kreme donuts ever come back to Philadelphia?

The king of Krispy Kreme in the Philadelphia ‘burbs is local franchise owner Keith Morgan, who says that over 43,000 people each month patronize his eateries, each making a purchase that averages a dozen donuts. That’s a half-million donuts a month, if you were counting. So why not some Krispy Kreme in Center City?

The answer is: it’s been tried before, and it failed. There was a Krispy Kreme at 16th and Chestnut, which is the busiest pedestrian intersection in the whole city of Philadelphia. So what went wrong? Well, Krispy Kreme franchises make the most money selling donuts by the boxed dozen. Situated at a pedestrian intersection, the Center City location caught customers who were likely to buy one, maybe two donuts at a time. There was also the fact that the location was pretty dead on the weekends, which are prime selling times for other franchises. Overall, profits were only a fraction of what they were at other locations, and the store shuttered. Other locations at Fox Chase and at Oxford and Hasbrook Avenue were bad because, despite having hundreds of thousands of people living nearby, drive-by traffic was relatively low. This is a capital crime in a business where drive-through sales are king.

It remains to be seen whether a Krispy Kreme franchise will ever make it in Philadelphia. Here’s hoping for all our sakes that it does.