Those snazzy “America Runs on Dunkin’” ads, with the irksomely catchy jingles by Lincoln, Massachusetts’s own They Might Be Giants, are happy to reinforce the distinction. The themes are laid bare: work, being productive, getting out. Doing stuff. Not sitting around some sybaritic café poking desultorily at a laptop. Another spot skewers an un-named coffee shop’s Continental pretensions: “My mouth can’t form these words. Is it French? Or is it Italian? Perhaps Fritalian.”
CULTURAL DETRITUS: Dunkin’ Donuts, it seems, is everywhere.
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“Starbucks, roughly, trades as female,” says Simon. “There’s something, to many people, sort of effete about it. One of the things you see in these ads is reaffirming the male values of [Dunkin’ Donuts].” Hiring schlubby good-guy John Goodman to do the voiceovers is another masterstroke for burnishing Dunkin’s everyman bona fides — even if one questions the wisdom of a donut chain picking a guy who’s pushing 400 pounds to be its pitchman.
Another indication of Dunkin’s homespun appeal: it’s a rare corporation indeed that can inspire an affectionate nickname. The Canadian donut chain Tim Horton’s — which is pursuing a downward expansion into Dunkin’ Donuts territory, but is treading cautiously in Massachusetts — has one. It’s “sort of woven in the myth of Canadian culture,” Simon says, “of people getting up in the morning, taking their kids to hockey holding a cup of Timmy’s.”
And in Boston, in New England, there is none other. Dunkin’. Dunks. D-and-D. Dunkies. The place is beloved, with a seemingly unshakable grip on the Yankee psyche. Can Starbucks claim a nickname? No indeed. “Starbucks is like the guy who introduces himself to you as Alexander,” says Simon. “It doesn’t want its name shortened. And anyway, what are you gonna call it, Bucky’s?”
Grand ole donuts
As Dunkin’ Donuts pushes westward and southward, however, it’s getting a bit more experimental in terms of catering to different tastes — and going beyond breakfast. If adding the French Toast Twist this fall was a minor revelation to a region reared on Munchkins and the old-fashioned cake donut, consider Sarasota, Florida, just one of the prototype Dunkin’ stores offering flatbread sandwiches and “Grab-N-Go Pizza.” (Lest you think they’re getting too fancy-pants, rest assured that one sandwich was renamed a “stuffed melt” after customers griped that the word “panini” was a mite dandy.)
One Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee who’s boldly going where no man has gone before — well, Tennessee — is Joe Rando. His story is a remarkable one, and it’s illustrative of the almost trance-inducing hold a lifelong love of Dunkin’ Donuts can have on a man.
Growing up in Lewiston, Maine, Rando was inculcated early on. “Dunkin’ Donuts was the treat. Stop by and get a dozen donuts. It’s the most vivid memory I have of a treat growing up.” Later, when he enrolled at Tufts, the caffeine took hold. “They’re everywhere. I lived near one. They’re on either side of the campus. Any T station you get off at.” He patronized them all. After graduation, it was more of the same. “I was a self-proclaimed three-or-four-times-a-day guy. I used to get one [cup] on the way to the T to go downtown. There was one at South Station, so I got one there. And there was one right outside Faneuil Hall, so I’d get one on the way into my office. And usually once more during the day. It really becomes a way of life.”
In 2004, a job transfer took Joe Rando to Nashville. It wasn’t long before, to his horror, he realized that there was nary a Dunkin’ Donuts to be found in Music City, USA. It was a soul-shaking revelation. “I joke with my wife,” he says. “ ‘How did we miss this?’ I would have never moved here if I had known.”
So he called Dunkin’ Donuts to ask what gives. Nashville, he contended, was the perfect city for an expansion. He argued, it would appear, fairly convincingly. “One phone call led to another, led to another,” he says. Next thing he knew, Joe Rando was quitting his job, “signing on the dotted line to be what they call a large-area developer, committing to build stores all over middle Tennessee.”
And just like that, Joe Rando had given his life over to Dunkin’ Donuts. Even though Nashville “is a big Southern Krispy Kreme market, and some people cautioned me,” he forged ahead. The first day, one store sold 7800 donuts in five hours. There were lines out the door for weeks. “There were just so many loyal Dunkin’ Donuts fanatics here,” says Rando. A good many of them, he says, were transplanted New Englanders who’d been waiting for a decade or more. “The pent-up demand for Dunkin’ Donuts was just phenomenal.”
For Rando, this massive life change, all the toil and sweat he’s put into opening several franchises, was well worth it. The measures were extreme, but the end justified the means. It was a “way to get my coffee.”