Maybe I’ll see you out there this weekend… we’ll be in and around town. I’m running the race on Sunday (Mayo Beach to Great Island lot and back) and will be at the parade Monday morning.

Have a good one and cheers!

MK

There appears to be a movement in this culture we call ours
For some quickness and convenience when it comes to eating flour
There are many transmutations, many shapes that wheat is sized in
And as many folks who eat it as are things it is disguised in

One such kind, the doughnut, is a favorite of the masses
Who flock to local doughnut shops to fatten up their, come on,
I would never use a word like that when there are children present
Though the words they hear and use at school may not be all that pleasant

Right here on nature’s sandy arm the Fleming family did commence
The preparation of this treat for which they rose to prominence
With elbows jostling torsos every morning, booties shaking
Where the local crowd would gather to partake of their fine baking

Boston cremes and honey dipped, coconut and chocolate covered
And the ones all stuffed with jelly or with shiny icing smothered
Don’t forget the muffins or the Maxwell House’s coffee
This is probably not the place to ask you waitress for a latte´

All was going smooth for years until one rueful day
When the world’s largest donut nation sailed into the bay
They thought they’d sneak right into town out by the cemetery
With those wash-ashores down from Vermont whose names were Ben and Jerry

But Cape Codders are a wily lot, they saw the frosting on the wall
And mounted up a protest to curtail this corporate sprawl
“We don’t need your You-Know-Who-nuts here in town amongst our neighbors
We’ve got Donut Shacks and Hole in One’s to do our pastry labors

So take your franchise somewhere else to make your big dinero
If I gotta have a croissant I’ll just hit the Chocolate Sparrow
Yet in spite of all the protest You-Know-Who-nuts got their store
First in Chatham, then in Eastham, and by now there’s several more

Don’t deny it, I have seen you there in line with all the tourists
Where they claim the world’s finest coffee, that’s a joke to purists
But if you pause to ponder, then this song will have succeeded
Right here at home you never know how much your dough is kneaded

So if you gotta have a sweet, there’s something you can do
Consider local merchants and the years that they’ve been here for you
They’re the ones who’ve earned your business,
So make sure that they don’t go nuts

Go spend more money at their stores

And less at You-Know-Who-nuts!

Over time (as corporate minds know) folks ‘anger residues’ fade and eventually they end up giving them business.
I know why folks LOVE Cape Cod.. Not just for the physical beauty but for the unique setting that includes local business. Why do folks choose Wellfleet over Hyannis? Hyannis has great beaches,and locked in by malls & mostly chain stores. Thank god they are all in one big heap. As a kid we loVEd to drive up to Hyannis and walk around the big stores Zayres.. and we were always so happy to LEAVE there and go back to Eastham where those ugly buildings weren’t.

I think the discussion has merit and I can speak as a codder, that employment is important but as mentioned above.. We have our own coffee company and coffee is an easy business to make huge profits.. We didn’t need Dunkin Donuts to come in. Seriously.. It’s here now and we don’t picket it.. but seriously do you really eat anything from there? Seriously?

Organic just makes sense. Blue collar workers could buy coffee at any local establishment and have for YEARS and have used those establishments as social venues where the owners, locals, banter and discuss. It’s what it is and I just won’t see myself ever being happy that DD is on Cape. And one last sliver comment, When I travel I go out of my way to find a local establishment to get a coffee or a tea. I really feel let down when I see familiar chains everywhere.. really disappointing.
Original creativity and keeping the village feeling is our best hope for staying connected (and I don’t mean just by email).
I do appreciate that DD spiffed up the fugliness Someone else could have as well. We have kick ass wash ashores who hire locals and can transform pine needle terrain into beauty.

But after having said all this… if I got a chance to spend some time with my family and it was at that DD, I wouldn’t put up a fuss at all.
It is what is is… Can’t die on every mountain! Happy to see that they did it in style. Nothing is the devil or all bad. Everything has sides.
Here are lyrics my husband wrote when DD came to ORleans: (in next entry)

In the past 4 years, DD has sued its franchisees about 150 times. This is more than McDonalds (5 lawsuits) and Subway (12 lawsuits) over the same period of time. They attempt to lock their franchise owners into onerous, ham-fisted contracts and then immediately call out the lawyers without warning if they think they have a case at all. In one case here in Boston, they wanted to sue and revoke both of their franchisee’s stores because his *wife* independently opened a breakfast/coffee shop in an unrelated location in Brighton. He had nothing to do with her business decisions or anything else and they pounced anyways. Their track record with their franchise owners is atrocious.

Wellfleet should have held out for a privately owned cafe. As limeduck points out, the coffee is going to come from somewhere else regardless, so it might as well be a small shop owner instead of a multi-location franchise owner who has to constantly tithe to a company that’s just waiting for an excuse to blast him away anyways. If there was a demand for coffee, there are plenty of people who can open a really high quality coffee shop with food that doesn’t come in convenient hockey-puck frozen patties and dehydrated packaging.

https://www.dunkindonuts.com/aboutus/credentials/TreeCupPopup.aspx

btw, if you can successfully get one coffee drinker to switch to cranberry juice, you would be the uber marketer of the year!

i am happy monica’s comment helped raise awareness about dd’s need to be more responsible. social media igniting social awareness. whoop. whoop.

After reading Monica’s post, I wish Dunks were more responsible to the planet, but probably not enough to pry the large iced from my hand. At least not yet.

i agree with you that if the local “cape places give you fresher food, more food and better service they’ll always beat these chains.” my hope it that both can coexist. let there be peace on earth…or at least in wellfleet!

i won’t go to pb every single day because i would gain 25 lbs by the end of the summer eating their croissants. another challenge is that sometimes i don’t have the time to wait in the line — even though it is worth the wait. however, rest assured you will bump into me there frequently as you did a few weeks ago.

i also still plan to get a ton of iced coffee at the south wellfleet store because it is delicious and i love the owner. i have no plans to be exclusive to dd.

you bring up a ton of great points and honestly i wouldn’t even try to counter them. the most concerning to me is the cups and i honestly had never thought of that before. i appreciate you raising my awareness.

i look forward to a cup of coffee with you at pb this weekend!

Here’s my gripe with DD. It’s actually very low quality coffee beans, not fairly traded, not shade grown, not organic. All those gazillions of cups they are handing out every day are decimating the environment. I have absolutely no respect for that. Doesn’t matter how well they treat their employees. At least Starbucks, who I am not endorsing here either, is environmentally contentious.

Kel, you know I’m a fruit cake, earthy crunchy, hippie mom when it comes to organic, non-processed, food. And yes, I make many stops at grocery stores during the week to visit the farmer’s market, our local farm stand, the cheese shop where everyone knows our name, and we have our grass-fed beef delivered from a local family farm. I am an anomaly, I know. But that’s the way it used to be in the old days. We know all the people we buy our food from, including when we’re in Wellfleet. It makes me feel safe. It makes me feel good to know that I’m keeping Lauren’s and Mac’s businesses open year to year. And it makes me feel healthy.

There is a serious, scary problem with the way we grow and manufacture food in this country. I won’t go there, unless you ask! And DD is just another link in that vicious chain. Yes, the girl selling coffee at the counter is local and she’s probably lovely. But DD is not owned by a Mom and Pop anymore than Wal-Mart is. And I don’t believe for a second that DD cares at all about that lovely girl selling you that cup of coffee. They want market share, and they want to get you in the door any way they can.

There are lots of really convenient places I won’t step foot in to because they are a chain whose practices — either labor or environmental — I deplore. It’s a huge sacrifice. But the way that I look at it, every DD or Starbucks that pops up on the corner means one less business opportunity for the mom and pop who want to make a go for it.

I really think Wellfleet sold out. I’m really disappointed. I guess desperate times call for desperate measures.

Can I buy you a croissant at cup of cafe americain at PB this weekend?

I guess it’s a delicate balance.

your comment also made me wonder at what point locals feel a mom & pop should no longer be loved because of growth. what is that magical number? 10 stores? 100 stores? if one of wellfleet’s local shops started to expand, at what point would the locals go from applauding the success to booing it? i don’t think dd did anything wrong in creating a well loved, iconic brand.

your other point about not having a lot of local coffee roasters is also interesting. in the spirit of honesty, i feel terrible that i am not able to frequent red barn roasters on a regular basis. friends own it. unfortunately, since k&p moved to boston, they are no longer on my commute. i do feel badly about the impact a dd has on their business.

enjoy the 4th!