Krispy Kreme Donuts

I remember when Krispy Kreme first opened in Australia, my boss’ brother would always buy a dozen from the Sydney Airport every time he flew in from there. Then while the family was in Sydney for Shane’s wedding in January, a cousin from Malaysia would go to the airport every morning the entire trip just to pick up some donuts for the rest of us. Because the Krispy Kreme outlet was located within the secured area in the departure area, he’d had to go through the metal-detector pass the security to get to those donuts, and then come back out again. I’m thinking that the guards would have given him a weird look or two.

It seems like there’s a similar craze for donuts happening at the moment in the countries to the north of us. I base that conclusion on these recent posts from some Malaysian and Singaporean blogs:

  • Suanie saw Kimberly raved on about Big Apple Donuts at The Curve, and then decided to try some herself, even as she insisted that she wasn’t a donut person. Needless to say, she loved it.

    In her post, she also does a good write up about how the founder of “Big Apple Donuts” wanted to share with other Malaysians, the kind of donuts that he had tasted whilst living in America. It’s a good read so check it out.

  • Meanwhile in Singapore, Dunkin Donuts seemed to have been the preferred brand but they no longer have an outlet there. It looks like the fad which had died out is in resurgence. How else would you explain the need for a service which sources donuts from a Dunkin Donuts outlet in JB (Johor Baharu, a neighbouring Malaysian city just across the border from Singapore) and then make once-per-week deliveries to three locations in Singapore?

    We speculate that they bring in the donuts from Malaysia because if they had an operating bakery in Singapore, wouldn’t it be logical for them to have at least an outlet to go along with it? (via IzReloaded)

  • However, nadnut tried out the service after knowing about them but came away bitterly dissapointed by the quality of the service and the lack of professionalism from the couriers. But the donuts were good though.

    The company better fine tune their service because they have a few competitors in Singapore chomping (ho ho ho) at their heels, judging by the two posts below.

  • A few days before IzReloaded wrote about the Dunkin Donuts delivery service, he had queued up for three hours (!!!) for half a dozen of donuts from Donut Factory at Raffles City. This was his story, along with pictures of delicious looking donuts.

    According to him, “the donuts at Donut Factory are definitely not Krispy Kreme but they are probably the best you can find in Singapore.”

  • And finally, in her post “Why donut queues are so long” Qiaoyun decided to find out the answer to the question that I’m sure many of us who have seen the ridiculous queues at shiny new donut shops would have asked. After joining the queue for some donuts at Vinco Doughnuts at VivoCity, and observing the crew behind the counter, she comes to the conclusion that the long waiting time is due to their inefficent SOP which she detailed in point form. She also adds,

    I suspect that maybe the management trains its staff to work very slowly in order to lengthen the queues so that the donut shop can look very, very popular.

    And long queues get longer because Singaporeans just can’t resist queues. The longer one is, the more people want in, never mind what the purpose of the queue is.

    See, Singaporeans love queuing because if people are queuing for it, it must mean that it’s good right? This must be true because a Singaporean said so. Heheh.

Dunkin DonutsI love donuts but queuing up for more than a few minutes to get some seems like too much effort and dedication to me. I’d gladly go into any bakery just before closing to get their half-priced leftover donuts. Heck, I’d even buy marked-down 1-day-before-expiry clear-wrapped on a styrofoam tray supermarket donuts.

I’m a cheap donut whore, yes I am. :mrgreen: