A Day in Life of a Krispy Kreme Donut

The day in the life of a Krispy Kreme doughnut starts with a semi tanker truck pulling up to the building and for 40 minutes the Krispy Kreme Quality Control people make sure that the flour meets their strict requirements.

Actually, the life of the Krispy Kreme donut starts with the secret recipe, bought by Vernon Rudolph in 1937. He bought the secret recipe from a New Orleans French chef.

We were able to get an almost close-up look of it when we visited the Krispy Kreme headquarters. It is held in a vault and only taken out for special occasions.

Inside of that envelope is probably a small piece of paper with hand-written scribbles that took 5 minutes to put together but we can only guess.

Once cleared to go, the flour is forced through a long tube into 36 foot high holding tanks and from there move on to the mixing tanks where the flour is mixed with the various other secret dry ingredients.

All along the entire process; the ingredients are probed, prodded, tested, weighed, and analyzed by high-tech equipment to make sure they meet the high quality standards to become a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

Once all the secret dry ingredients are mixed, the mixture is either put in a bag for shipping to one of their many worldwide stores (in 21 countries as of this writing) or it stays at the NC facility to be turned into delicious doughnuts.

Here are some of the ingredients used in making the KK donuts but not all donuts have all of these ingredients: eggs, milk, butter, yogurt, whey, nonfat milk and nonfat whey, soy-based lecithin, and wheat, including bran, germ, gluten, starch and flour.  The donuts are cooked in a vegetable shortening containing palm, soybean, and/or cottonseed and canola oil.

The donut process has been watched over by hungry customers since Krispy Kreme opened. We watch as they move through the hot oil bath, flipping onto their backs so they are evenly cooked – nice and toasty – and finally as they go through the fountain of glaze.

Once the donuts have been made, it is time to decorate them. Some even get filled with cream or jelly using these special machines.

Having just finished receiving the coat of glazing or been filled and decorated, the finished donut moves onto the packing station, where they get to see if I go into a box for shipment to a store or on a tray in a protected movable bin for shipment to a local Krispy Kreme shop.

Some of the donuts get boxed up into special Fund Raising boxes. Did you know that Krispy Kreme has an expansive fund raising program? Talk to your school, club or organization about selling Krispy Kreme donuts the next time you are doing a fundraising project.

For ever box of Krispy Kreme original glazed donuts sold your group will earn from $3.50 to $4.25 per dozen – that’s a lot of profit. When you think of how little a Girl Scout troop actually earns for selling those over-price cookies, Krispy Kreme makes a lot of sense.

You can read all about the Krispy Kreme Fund Raising program, Dollars for Dozens, at www.krispykreme.com

Of course, there is nothing quite like the Original Glazed Krispy Kreme donut – original goodness at the very first bite!

Want more? Learn how to pair coffee with Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Disclaimer: We were part of the KK Blogger Summit in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and got a first-hand glimpse of the business from the inside. Our travel and hotel was covered but our opinions were provided solely by us.