Krispy Kreme

Distribution or Place Strategy is defined as "the element of a firm's decision-making concerned with developing an efficient and effective means of storing and handling finished products and of getting them efficiently to the target market."

Krispy Kreme was started in 1937 by Vernon Rudolph. Mr. Rudolph purchased a doughnut recipe from a french chef in New Orleans, Lousiana. He enjoyed immediate success by selling his pastries to local supermarkets. However, his doughnuts' popularity began to quickly grow, and customers would often stop by his bakery and ask to buy hot doughnuts. He quickly realized a new distrubtion strategy, and cut a hole in the side of his building to sell directly to his customers. Thus the Krispy Kreme's famous marketing message "Hot Doughnuts Now" had been born.

By the 1940s Krispy Kreme had grown into a small chain of family owned stores. As they continued to enjoy success Mr. Rudolph became concerned with the consistency of his product. Each store followed the Krispy Kreme recipe, but since they were all made from scratch, there were some variations in the doughnuts. So, Mr. Rudolph built his own mixing plant, and distribution network to deliver a dry mix to all of his stores. Later the Krispy Kreme Company had engineers design and build their own doughnut making equipment, to further ensure consistency. Today almost everything needed to operate a Krispy Kreme franchise is shipped directly to retail stores from one of three distribution

warehouses. These warehouses are responsible for shipping all doughnut mixes and ingredients, employee unfiorms, and even cleaning supplies to their operators.

Krispy Kreme makes roughly 5 million doughnuts per day, which translates into about 2 billion doughnuts per year. That's a huge amount of pastries which have to be delivered to their end consumer. Currently, Krispy Kreme has over "310 stores, and