Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 6, June 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article and photos below in your research. Be sure to quote the Seattle Sun as your source.

Krispy Kreme makes Seattle debut

in a big way

By SUSAN PARK

If you've noticed a sweet aroma in the air as you drive down Highway 99, it's not the Rhododendrons in bloom, it's Seattle's first Krispy Kreme doughnut shop at the intersection of 125th St. and Aurora Avenue North (Highway 99).

Any doughnut tastes wonderful fresh from the fryer and we all have our favorites. In Wallingford, there's Winchell's and the new locally based Mighty O Donuts who cater to Vegans by not using eggs or dairy ingredients in their dough.

But, Krispy Kreme has a cult-like following of loyal customers, young and old. They've done for doughnuts what locally based Starbucks has done for coffee.

And as the jelly piper pipes, the masses are coming ­ by foot, by bike, and by SUV-load to the cake-like icing-white building with green and red frosting-colored trim.

Although I myself am on my own modified version of the low carbohydrate Atkin's diet, I justified eating a Krispy Kreme by making the 3.2 mile round trip trek on foot from my home in East Haller Lake. En route, it was clear I was not alone. A paper, crisp, white, Krispy Kreme hat lay in the sidewalk on Meridian, no doubt dropped by some enthusiastic child. Farther along, I met an elderly woman toting a 1/2 dozen sized box who said she lives south of the store in Licton Springs and doesn't mind the trek. "I walk two to four miles every day, anyway," she says.

On the way back, I broke the "icing" by striking up a conversation with my new neighbors, Bob and Shirley who I had not met, yet. They confessed they had attempted to wait out the drive thru that morning, got frustrated and left, and were now ready to give walking a try.

Raised on doughnuts

Krispy Kreme Doughnut Company and I share the hometown of Winston-Salem, N.C. where I was raised with the misconception that everyone ate doughnuts morning, noon, and night. We had them for breakfast. We had them after Sunday School and before Church. We had them at Girl Scouts and even sold them to raise money (forget the cookies!). They are even served at wedding receptions to this very day.

As a Brownie, I remember touring the large headquarters on Stratford Road and heading down into the gigantic white basement where doughnuts traveled on conveyer belts all over the room and workers in white plastic hair caps and gloves gingerly lifted doughnuts into boxes with a stick.

A high-tech compact vertical version of the conveyer belt where doughnuts rise for about 33 minutes before being gently placed into the fryer for about three minutes is on display at the Seattle store. Waiting in line becomes an adventure. The sign at the beginning tells us that "Luis" is making the doughnuts and you can occasionally see him dumping new batches of dough into the top of the machine. A small step allows shorter individuals to see down into the fryer. The store can make more than 3000 doughnuts in an hour.

Perhaps most impressive is the "wall of icing" the fried doughnuts pass through on the final step before being plucked off the conveyer belt by one of their 150 employees. The thick original glazing gives Krispy Kremes their trademark creamy taste. Remember to microwave them for a mere eight seconds to get that fresh-off-the-fryer, melt-in-your mouth experience. On a hot summer day of North Carolina proportions, the glaze will unfortunately melt off.

There are fourteen other varieties of doughnuts at the Seattle store for the connoisseur as well as coffee and an assortment of beverages.

As a child, I used the clean green polka dotted boxes to store my Barbie Dolls and school papers. Now the company has it's own line of merchandise for sale including t-shirts, hats, mugs, toy delivery trucks, and even baby booties.

Pictures of early Krispy Kreme store's, including the one on Stratford Road I frequented as a child, dot the Seattle store walls.

A Fast Food Family

We can thank Gerard Centioli, president and CEO of KremeWorks, the Seattle based franchisee of Krispy Kreme, for bringing the melt-in-your mouth doughnuts west to Seattle.

Centioli was raised in the fast food chain business. He says his father, Gil Centioli, brought the first drive-in fast food hamburger joint to Seattle called "Gil's" long before Dick's and Burgermaster became household names. The Centioli family took long road trips by car throughout the United States where "we would try anything in whatever area we were in," he says.

After attending a National Restaurant Association conference in Hawaii, Gil met Colonel Sanders himself who was giving a cooking demonstration of his now famous Kentucky Fried Chicken. "My father tasted it, fell in love with it, and said 'I've got to bring it to Seattle,'" he says. The family eventually became the proud operators of a 41-store KFC franchise.

As an adult, Centioli was now ready to start his own franchise business. He remembered trying his first Krispy Kreme doughnut when he was ten or eleven on one of his family road trips. His father looked into the franchise, but at that time found that the company was not interested in expanding out of the southeastern United States.

Six years ago when a Krispy Kreme opened in New York, Centioli got on the phone to the Krispy Kreme headquarters immediately to find out how to bring the chain to Seattle. He says his families many years of experience operating food chains were what helped him win the bid after two-and-a-half years of negotiations. His first store opened in Issaquah in October 2001. He plans to eventually open 30 stores in all in Alaska, British Columbia, Oregon, Hawaii, and Washington State.

First in line

No one can convince these excited first customers at the Seattle store's grand opening that it's "just a doughnut."

Zachariah Rel of Shoreline, age 17, was number one in line and had come at 6 p.m. the night before to wait in line and camp out all night. His classmates at Shorecrest High School, David Rieben and Kimi Cropp were numbers two and three. Two high school students from North Seattle's Broadview neighborhood, Zach Conrad and Tynan Kogane arrived at 11 p.m. to claim the 13th and 14th spots.

At approximately 5:15 a.m., the long wait was finally over when Centioli, joined by City Councilwoman Heidi Wills and 12-year-old Lisa Amsler of Redmond cut the ribbon to officially open the North Seattle Krispy Kreme.

Amsler got the honor of participating in the event, thanks to her parents, Lee and Penny Amsler, who cast the high bid of $800 in an auction to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of Washington. As part of their prize, the Amslers also donated 30 dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts to their favorite charity, Children's Hospital in Laurelhurst, where their daughter Lisa received care after being diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis when she was two-years-old.

Heidi Wills and her husband Kobi Yamada got up at 4 a.m. to make it to the ribbon cutting in time. "We normally go to the gym," said Yamada when I asked him how he managed to get up so early. Wills admitted that she tasted her first Krispy Kreme this morning. "It was worth it," she says.

And the customers keep coming. It's addicting.