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.
