I really believe DD has expanded too quickly. There is hardly a suburban street without one here in NJ. As a result, their product quality has dropped and has been very inconsistent. Their service has suffered. They are putting the independent "mom & pop" shops out of business.
Did you know that just one DD bagel = FIVE daily bread servings? Nobody needs that. Did you see the fat content of the foods?... Nutrition info is on their web site and it is not good.
The only reasons DD remains successful are ones we should all fight against to uphold everyone's quality-of-life: 1.) Familiarity to the Public because of evil corporate induced similarity and advertising, 2.) Drive-Thrus that add convenience along with unnecessary carbon emissions, 3.) Caffeine & sugar addiction.
I recently learned that their business practices are highly questionable. According to this NY Daily News article:
In fact, Dunkin' Donuts has sued other franchise owners 154 times since 2006.So, if quality and nutrition concerns don't move you, maybe fighting corporate greed will. Join me in my personal boycott, and let me know about it. Thanks!
Over the same stretch of time, McDonald's was involved in five lawsuits. And Subway, a company that has four times the number of locations as Dunkin' Donuts, sued its franchises 12 times.
After talking to dozens of franchise owners just like us, we learned that this was more than an unusual litigation binge. This was a corporate strategy.
In order to compete with Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts has announced a plan to open 15,000 stores by 2016. There's only one problem with that plan. Because Dunkin' Donuts is made up entirely of franchisee-owned stores, it relies on franchisees to open new stores.Only large, multiunit owners who already own dozens of stores have the means to expand quickly.
Dunkin's answer to this conundrum is to systematically replace single-store owners with multistore owners. And because they can't just force these mom-and-pop shops to sell, they strong-arm them with threats of lawsuits over minor "contract infractions."
The consequences of this are real, personal and painful. The owners of these stores - who overwhelmingly tend to be immigrants - lose their entire life's work.
5 comments:
I always preferred Starbuck's to DD anyway, but the corporate strong-arming of the franchisee's cinches it for me. :)
I'd like to propose a whole new reason to boycott DD... their lack of back bone! To pull an ad becuase of a "terrorist scarf", as Kieth Olbermann called it, is so rediculous it deserves a "reverse boycott!"
I just sent the following to DD's website...
"This really has nothing to do with the store in Philadelphia that I frequent... it has everything to do with the ad you PULLED of Rachel Ray due to a threat by a few radicals... I can't believe you folded so easily. If there was nothing wrong in your intent, which I am certain there wasn't, then a simple statement would have been fine but to pull the ad only makes you look guilty and yeilding to a group such as this empowers them... making you a key participant!
I'm afraid I will not be going to dunkin's anymore... I hope others do the same... I think the boycott threat you were trying to avoid is going to back fire... at least in my case."
Quit your whinning. Just because DD is a successful corporation that played the business game and won doesn't mean you should boycott them. Are you boycotting Wal-Mart? Are you boycotting McDonald's? The only reason I even care about this is because I work at a DD. DD is a franchise, not some corporate juggernaut hellbent on putting everyone out of business.
The only people you'd be hurting if you're serious (which I find hard to believe--as the commenter above says, what other corporations with MUCH worse practices are you boycotting, including those whose employees truly suffer)are the moms and pops who own your local Dunkin Donuts. And those of us who work for them. Don't get all high and mighty unless you actually understand how franchises work. Nutrional value? The facts are available online, as you mentioned, and customers are capable of making their own decisions regarding where and what they eat. Don't infantalize the consumer. Also, quality is also the responsibility of the franchise owner; our's is pretty damn good.
I've been boycotting Dunks for over a year now. It's not because they're a big corporation (even though that means I don't feel bad about boycotting them), not because of the TERRIBLE coffee and sub par donuts and bagels. Not to mention the chaotic amount of sugar they add to their drinks. It's not even because of the lousy service that plagues just about every DD around. And I couldn't care less about this Rachel Ray fiasco.
I boycott Dunkin' Donuts (as well as HoneyDew) because both of these companies continue to use Styrofoam cups for their hot coffee. Now they even put a styrofoam cup over the plastic cups when you get iced coffee there. They are responsible for millions of styrofoam cups entering our landfills every day. This fact, combined with their questionable labor practices, bad service (sorry anon!), and bad products, lead me to take my business elsewhere every time.
I was once in a commercial for Dunkin' Donuts, but now I refuse to step foot in one.
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