Well, it looked promising for a while – Melbourne-based Walker’s Doughnuts moved into the Sydney market. But it looks like the Sydney dream is over.

It started with a store in Darling Harbour, and before too long they had about 6 outlets across Sydney in some rather random shopping centres – Roselands, The Galeries (CBD), Merrylands, and a few others.

I noticed the one in Darling Harbour had closed in March, and I posted about it. Recently, I received a comment from an anonymous ex-employee who said they had been underpaid by 2 weeks. I don’t blame him/her for being disgruntled.

Anyway, I checked the Walker’s Doughnuts – it’s down. It’s a bad time to have your website down because, at the moment with restrictions, people want information. I have to add that over the last year, it felt like their website was inoperative more than not.

I checked the shopping centre websites that I had listed as having Walker’s outlets. Not one of them still had a Walker’s on their books. All closed.

And then I saw a social media post from Walker’s proudly announcing, as restrictions are easing, their stores are going to re-open. Every store listed were Melbourne stores.

What do we take from this? Are they victims of the virus restrictions? I don’t think that was their problem. I think the problems started before this. A big sign was the closure of the Darling Harbour store. If that one wasn’t going to work, they were going to be hard-pressed to make any of them work.

Roselands? Merrylands? Really? Leave those areas to Donut King. You can’t sell gourmet doughnuts in hamburger towns.

So it appears that anyone wanting their Walker’s Doughnuts will have to wait for a trip to Melbourne.

And let that be a lesson for other doughnut makers thinking they can waltz into the fickle Sydney market.

Walker’s Doughnuts