Hot Light Brands has the Krispy Kreme franchise for Chicago, St. Louis and central Illinois, the report said. It will [image-nocss] deliver several dozen doughnuts of different varieties to seven Super Pantry stores in Champaign-Urbana, two each in Mahomet and Monticello, and one each in Savoy, Rantoul and Villa Grove, Ryan Moran, category manager for Tri-Star Marketing Inc. in Champaign, told the paper. Tri-Star operates the Super Pantry stores.
Doughnuts can also be ordered in bulk through the Super Pantry stores, Moran added.
Prepackaged boxes of Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts have been available in several area grocery stores, but are not delivered to the stores daily, Axarides said.
Joe Reuter, the general manager for Hot Light Brands, said he opened a Krispy Kreme shop in Bloomington four-and-a-half years ago and one in Peoria two years ago. He is still exploring whether to open one in Champaign-Urbana. "Right now, we don't have a set date, not even a location," he told the papery. "We're going to start delivering doughnuts to Champaign to see if there's a market."
Champaign-based Tri-Star operates approximately 55 gas stations, c-stores and travel centers in Illinois and Indiana. Gasoline brands include BP and ExxonMobil. Quick-serve restaurant offerings currently include Subway, Quizno's, Jimmy John's, Arby's and Dairy Queen.
Several years ago, Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Krispy Kreme ran into trouble over accounting and distribution problems and overextended itself in c-stores and has since pulled back from the channel.
And the pullback continues. The company is retreating from the Scranton, Pa., area, according to a report by The Times-Tribune, removing product from regional grocery stores and c-stores.
"Fuel was going through the roof," Joe Adcroft Jr., vice president of operations at Krispy Kreme Doughnut Co., which has retail shops in Scranton and South Abington Township, told the paper. "That was the clincher."
The local franchise ceased wholesale distribution to sites in more than a dozen counties in late September, said the report. Krispy Kreme laid off about 15 of its 55 employees, including all its drivers, to concentrate on its core retail and fundraising operations.
"You would put all the costs down and see what's coming in and say, 'This doesn't make sense'," Adcroft said of the wholesale operation. "We are pleased with our decision, in spite of the fact that gas has gone back down."
But volume fuel users who took steps to reduce consumption when prices hit the ceiling have traded those concerns for worries about the economic slump, said the report. "The price of fuel has eased a little of the burden, but it has shifted in a different direction. How long is this economic slowdown going to last?" Tom Williams, business development director for Calex Logistics Services, a warehousing and transportation company in Pittston, told the paper. "There's just less stuff traveling on the road."
Krispy Kreme's five trucks were traveling seven days a week and some routes ran 300 miles daily, Adcroft said. Its wholesale operation stopped generating a profit about a year ago, he said, and the jump this year in prices for fuel and commodities, along with vehicle maintenance, insurance and bookkeeping costs, brought the end. "You won't be in business at all if you don't eliminate the things that are hurting you," he said. "You scale back, you regroup, you try to make ends meet."
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