Connecticut has recently taken its first casualty of Krispy Kreme chaos and quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing about it already. Not the hype, per se – we’ve got another 26 days for the Milford store to open – but about the whining about the hype. See, here’s the deal. KK is one of those home-grown, American phenomenon. There’s no other way to describe it. I’ve known about KK for a long while now – at least the five years or more. It helps having friends in the South, where they seem to know the difference between fast, good food and fast food – if not KK as an example, look at Chick-fil-A – great chicken. Hell, they even get some form of service from their fast food employees down there and, more importantly, their customers are serviceable. What do I mean? There’s a few different things in this Rant already so lets take’m, one at a time.

The biggest problem with long lines in fast food today is the stupid and inane customers. You heard me – customers fuck up a perfectly good fast food line. You’ve seen it before… the woman that goes through a drive thru and orders 16 coffees and 250 individually selected and viewed Munchkins from Dunkin’ Donuts. Or the guy that tries to order from Burger King a “Whopper with cheese, only mayo, I mean ketchup, oh and mayo, with lettuce and pickle… tomato too. Oh, but no cheese” – this could have simply been put as “Whopper, no tomato” but now that he’s ordered it like a fancy, two-handled needlepoint stitch, the employee is completely lost and the guy gets a Chicken Sandwich instead. Of course, he comes up five minutes later, too, to jam up the other half of the counter with whining about incompetence, even though it was his own fault that the order got screwed. Let us also not forget the mother at McDonald’s that needs to order a happy meal for each member of Wolf Pack 451, asking each kind individually with “What do you want? No, I don’t think you should have a large shake. Well all right, but don’t complain to me when you’re hypogysemic in 45 years!” What fast food employee can survive this onslaught?

Now onto Krispy Kreme. Contrary to popular believe, they are not from New York! I heard this from a group of people that think the US ends west of the New Jersey. KK are all Southern and they’re been around for about 60 years now. They couldn’t be more from the south even if the Confederate flag was their logo. They’ve gotten better over the years too, which is another unique trait – you can’t tell me the first Big Mac wasn’t better than prepackaged crap they serve now. No, KK took their ideals of hot and fresh doughnuts and wove technology through it. They now use an automated bank of machines to fry and prepare the doughnuts; they go from prep to hot oil, flipped automatically and then, depending on the variety being made of course, get pushed under the glazing waterfall – it’s amazing the things you can find interesting while piss ass drunk in Vegas, eh? How do I know about KK? I’m a shareholder. I owned them in the pre-NYSE days and I’m keeping them for a long while to come. Because of that, yes, I’ve done a bit of research. I also wanted to open a franchised store here in CT, for the last three years, but since KK demanded a certain level of commitment in new states (for CT a minimum of three franchises for the first installment) and that would require a cash fund of millions. Consequently, someone else has long since beat me to it – more power to them. They were nice enough to put one near me and that’s the cause of the third point.

Shut the fuck up, all of you CT people! Yes, new KK always cause traffic. In WA state, where at the time this was their first KK store, people drove from up to six hours away to wait over four hours for doughnuts. Yes. No lie. I know that because it was February and I was at a friends wedding (Hi Steve!) so I saw the news story first hand. the traffic doesn’t last but shut up about it already for the love of Pete! You people make it sound like you’ve never seen a line or traffic before! Wanna see lines? Kick PowerBall up to $300 million again, and go to Stamford or Enfield. Want to see traffic? Ride the train with me in the morning, and watch the lines of cars on 95 every day. So why the out cry? Because they’re just doughnuts? Ever stop to wonder what the people waiting for the lotto tickets get? Hah! Never, ever underestimate the power of a doughnut – just ask Homer about them. And why do you think they’re new anyway? KK was first outed nationally in a Seinfeld episode; Kramer claimed to have seen Joe D. eating at a KK in the City. So yes, they’ve been there for a while. And they’re sold at Yankee Stadium. And at every Starbucks in the US – they’re not that big a secret nor are they hard to get. But yes, as they are the world’s most perfect doughnut they do deserve the attention.

I just wish they could get Dunkin’s coffee… that’s the biggest hole in store – no pun intended, because the Iced Doughnut doesn’t have a hole.