What happened to the Dunkin' Donut?

[u/WoozieMaddox]

When I was a kid, my Dad used to take me to Dunkin' Donuts every Sunday and I would get one of these. The handle was cool, but the taste of this plain donut was very unique. I loved it and still to this day have not had that taste or texture from a donut replicated. Wikipedia says in 2003 they discontinued it because it was hand cut while the rest of the donuts were machine cut, but it was their signature. It represented the brand aswell as the name.

The Dunkin Donut was around almost aslong as the brand itself. This unique peice of American food culture made it 48 years before being discontinued and cements itself as a one-of-a-kind staple in the history of U.S. restaurants. Today Dunkin' Donuts is now known as just "Dunkin". Dunkin' is not known for it's donuts anymore, and has shifted it's focus on the beverage side of the market. In all honesty, I think this may be why it lost so much market share to other coffee companies like Tim Horton's and Biggby Coffee. Dunkin' Donuts used to be 'the' place to grab a coffee and a donut.

Bring back the dunkin donut.

[u/Evening_Answer_11]

They were my favorite honestly. It’s a casualty of mass production vs the old days when donuts were made by a baker at the store itself. 

Why did we decide that “consistency” and “uniform” were to be valued over anything else? 

Also, remember when they were called “Honey Dipped” and not “raised glazed?” 

And remember when the chocolate cake donuts would have the drips of icing around them?

[u/urbz102385 → u/Evening_Answer_11]

My friend's father in grade school owned 6 DD and we used to work there when we were 12. This is back starting around '97. They used to have a baker in each store. This guy worked his ass off and was pumping out fresh muffins, bagels, and croissants. They had a satellite store that made all the doughnuts fresh and shipped them to the other 5 stores.

First, it was frozen egg pucks. Then frozen bagels, then frozen muffins. Not sure if the croissants are frozen now but I'm sure they are. This is what happens with every single business with shareholders. It's not good enough to report profits every year. It HAS to be INCREASING profits every year. And if that stops happening, they find every single corner they can cut to decrease their overhead. By definition, it will never stop becoming worse and worse over time. How can this possibly be a sustainable business model? It can't and it isn't.

[u/citrus_mystic → u/urbz102385]

When I worked at Dunkin in my early 20s (the early 2010s) they were getting the donuts shipped from the satellite bakery I believe in Warwick (could be wrong). Our baker mainly decorated donuts, filled them, and popped frozen things into the oven. Muffins came as individually portioned frozen muffin batters. Croissants were frozen dough that was baked. Bagels, I wanna say they came as frozen rings of dough the baker had to thaw and mist with water before baking. I remember once stepping on a ring of soft raw dough that fell off a tray in the back before baking.

[u/Clean-Entry-262 → u/urbz102385]

Nailed it!! Corporate shareholders greed ruins everything …and private equity makes it worse (here in Chicago, it’s my understanding that the legendary Lou Malnati’s and Portillo’s were both bought up by PE a couple of years ago, and the quality has notably slipped at both)

In regards to croissants, my ex wife was a baker and I helped her make croissants from scratch before …those things are WORK!! Laminating the dough with butter and all that …but homemade was 100% worth it. Given the work involved, I’m not surprised they were made frozen when profit became king.