The latest news is that Doughnut Time is closing almost half of its remaining stores, and just one will remain open in Sydney. The ex-staff aren’t too happy about it either, because some are owed money.
At one time, Doughnut Time had over 30 stores. Now just seven will remain open, by my count.
There was also this article from December 2017 about how Doughnut Time was conquering London. Just over 12 months later and things are looking bad.
This comes off the back of all the bad press that the Donut King Franchisers, RFG, have had lately, with many franchise owners going to the wall in debt.
Which amounts to major problems for two of the three free-standing doughnut chains in Australia. (Krispy Kreme being the only other one).
What does this tell us?
It tells us that there are idiots out there.
Blind, commonsense-lacking idiots.
Australia is not the place for a chain of stores where the doughnut is the absolute hero product. Do that and you’re history.
Australia likes boutique doughnut stores. Or stores where they can get a doughnut among lots of other things.
The Krispy Kreme experience should have yelled that to them through a loudspeaker set to 11.
The Doughnut Time business model was awful. A young girl in an uncomfortably cramped space selling over-priced doughnuts with quirky names. They were presented like you are going to take home half a dozen or more. At no time did they present them like they are something you’d pop in for to have as a snack with coffee. Of course, they didn’t sell coffee either. That would be too sensible.
The girl in the cramped space would spend more time building your take-away box than doing customer service. And I’m going to guess that a lot of those girls that worked there were back-packers, who generally don’t give two rats about customer service because they are only there for the short run anyway.
I feel very sorry for the many people who have lost their jobs or lost their money. Sadly, that’s the jungle we live in. I’ve lost jobs in my life too, and it’s not nice.
Let’s hope that it creates some sort of re-balance in the universe, where while one person loses their job, another picks one up someplace else.
DomNuts 