When making dough, familiarity breeds bankruptcy
Once the suburban man's Holy Grail of all things fried and glazed, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts became less than ordinary this week. The Krispy Kreme franchisee for Illinois filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and said it would cut jobs and close some stores in the suburbs.
Falling prey to the same penchant as many of their customers, Krispy Kreme apparently bit off more than they could chew.
Long a staple in the South, the North Carolina-based Krispy Kreme created an almost mythical appetite for its doughnuts in 1998 when it opened its first Chicago-area drive-through in Summit.
The neon "Hot Doughnuts Now" sign was a beacon that cried out, "Give us your hungry, your sweet-craved, your huddled masses longing to inhale fried dough."
Across the suburbs, anyone who brought Krispy Kremes to the office was greeted as a hero returning from a hunt for carbs and fat. A dozen Krispy Kremes were to office workers what a carton of Marlboros were to prison inmates.
Less than a decade later, Krispy Kremes are omnipresent offerings at grocery stores and even gas stations. The stock price that once soared near $50 a share suffered an Icarus-like plummet to close Friday at $3.91.
Krispy Kreme isn't the only product to make that trip from mystique to mundane.
One of my wife's most memorable family vacations from her childhood featured her dad's Herculean efforts to smuggle aluminum cans of Colorado-made Coors beer back to Illinois in an era when that beer couldn't be found this far east.
While he could fit 36 cans in a junky old suitcase he took on business trips, he strapped 10 cases of Coors onto the luggage rack of the family Pontiac while returning from Yellowstone. To foil heists in motel parking lots, he unloaded the family luggage at night so he could lock the beer in the trunk.
"Of course, now I don't even drink it," my father-in-law notes.
Coors crossed the Mississippi in 1981, became available in all 50 states by 1991 and today's nationwide Coors advertising blitz has made Coors Light the country's third best-selling beer. But what Coors gained in cash, it lost in cachet.
It's hard to think of a product today that maintains any air of mystery. Thirty years ago, when I made my first trip home from college, I brought along a couple of bags of bagels from Kaufman's in Skokie.
My friends in rural Indiana reacted as if I were Marco Polo returning from Cathay with containers of exotic Chinese carryout. By the end of the decade, the once-rare bagel could be found in the frozen section of the IGA.
A coffee shop within walking distance of my house serves up beignets and café au lait that rival the offerings at Café du Monde in New Orleans.
You no longer must trek to Nashville to bite into a GooGoo Cluster. You don't have to be south of the Mason-Dixon Line to wash down a MoonPie with a Royal Crown Cola. The Ocean View Pizzaria in Naalehu promises "the best Philly Cheese Steak in Hawaii," while Nuts To You in Philadelphia sells roasted whole macadamia nuts for $9.89 a pound.
Clam chowder is so commonplace you can even find the Boston version in Manhattan. Baja Fresh brings fish tacos to strip malls. You feel silly toting home chocolates from Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco when the neighborhood Jewel has them on sale.
Kentucky Fried Chicken expanded beyond Louisville. Pizza, whether Chicago-style, New York-style or even from a California kitchen, is ubiquitous.
The In-N-Out Burger remains a West phenomenon, and the Horseshoe can't seem to escape Springfield. But that might be for the best.
Give the people what they want, and they just might not want it as much.