"My dad is sad cause no one is coming to his new donut shop đ," tweeted the son of the proprietor of Billy's Donuts in Missouri City, Texas. The brilliant marketing move resulted in a sell-out of donuts and kolaches.
From Houstonia:
By Sunday afternoon his tweet was retweeted more than 150,000 times. By Monday morning? More than 260,000 times. To put that in perspective, the 30th most retweeted tweet in Twitter history (by South Korean boy band BTS) has about 630,000 retweets.
...
On Monday morning, Billy was being interviewed by other local news stations and working on a potential CNN spot, while representatives from Twitter were on hand greeting customers. Yes, Twitter. They bought out the store for the morning, meaning everyoneâs order was on them. (Representatives wouldnât comment on the record about their presence at the shop.) And while Billy played gracious host, Satharith kept busy in the back, and an aunt worked the cash register. It all seemed surreal that within 48 hours, this family-owned Cambodian donut shop in Missouri City had become something of an epicenter of social media
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Dunkin' Donuts will still sell donuts but, as of January, shall only be Dunkin'.
According to CNN, "The makeover is part of Dunkin' Brand's efforts to relabel itself as a 'beverage-led' company that focuses on coffees, teas, speedy service and to-go food including -â but not limited to â doughnuts."
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The San Diego County Fair, the largest one in the United States with an estimated 1.6M visitors annually, is known for its quirky, over-the-top vendor food. This organizers of this year's fair themed it "How sweet it is" and asked its vendors to come up with at least one rainbow-colored "unicorn-specific" dish.
One vendor took the unicorn-food challenge and created these cotton candy ice cream sandwiches:
Yes, those are Fruity Pebbles.
San Diego Union-Tribune podcasters Abby Hamblin and Luis Gomez humorously rated the taste of five of the fair's more unusual food offerings:
Deep-fried filet mignon:
[Abby] This dish wins the award for ugliest presentation with the best taste...
Not an actual donut (sad face)
Spaghetti donut:
[Luis] This dish was exactly what I had imagined, which is just a bunch of pasta shaped as a doughnut. Itâs not fried. And it tasted just as I imagined, just pasta. It wasnât disappointing, but it wasnât totally exciting either...
Lasagna nachos:
[Abby] This was my favorite of the day. It tastes like pasta but feels like a nacho...
More: San Diego County Fair food diary: 5 unique dishes to try and What to eat at the San Diego County Fair this summer
The fair is open now through July 4 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.
screenshots via The San Diego Union-Tribune Read the rest
Donut Squirrel is my new spirit animal. Read the rest
When you care enough to send the very best, skip the Hallmark cards and flowers and ship a bouquet of donuts to a loved one.
It's a thing. A bunch of donut bouquet shops have popped up around the globe. Here's what I could find:
-- Los Angeles: Donut Princess LA, prices start at $20 for three donuts
-- London: Donut Bouquets, prices start at ÂŁ34.99 (~$48.87) for eight donuts, delivered in a "luxurious black box"
-- Australia (various cities): Dessertboxes.com.au, prices start at $78 AUD (~$61.15) for eight donuts, also in a fancy box
-- Las Vegas and Henderson: The Donut Bouquet, prices at $49.95 for a dozen, customizations available
This is not to be confused with the evil clown donut delivery service.
image via Donut Princess LA Read the rest
That revamped IT film is bringing clowns, downright terrifying ones, right back into the pop culture spotlight.
One donut shop in Texas is leveraging the trend by offering a scary clown delivery service. On Monday and Tuesday, September 25 and 26, you can have Hurts Donut (great name!) in the Dallas suburb of Frisco do the dirty deed for you. And by "dirty deed," I mean "have an evil clown deliver your friends donuts."
In an interview with Dallas area site GuideLive, Hurts Donut co-owner Kas Clegg denies the service was directly inspired by IT clown Pennywise, "We always try to keep up with the trends, and clowns are trending right now... We just love scary clowns."
Have future enemies in the Frisco area? Call 469-214-8001 to schedule delivery. The clown delivery fee is $5 in addition to the regular delivery fee of $5. So, $10 plus whatever the donuts cost.
The donut shop notes on Facebook, "If we have enough interest in surrounding communities, let us know in the comments below, we may pick a day for out of town clown deliveries as well!"
Thanks, Chris!
Previously: Steven King's "It" hurting the clown business Read the rest
At the Los Angeles Times, David Pierson unties the story of why doughnut boxes are so frequently pink, particularly in southern California. It's a story of Cambodian refugees who emigrated to the US in the 1970s and built the donut market. But why pink? From the LA Times:
According to (Bakemark, formerly Westco) company lore, a Cambodian doughnut shop owner asked Westco some four decades ago if there were any cheaper boxes available other than the standard white cardboard. So Westco found leftover pink cardboard stock and formed a 9-by-9-by-4-inch container with four semicircle flaps to fold together. To this day, people in the business refer to the box as the â9-9-4.â
âItâs the perfect fit for a dozen doughnuts,â said Jim Parker, BakeMarkâs president and chief executive.
More importantly to the thrifty refugees, it cost a few cents less than the standard white. Thatâs a big deal for shops that go through hundreds, if not thousands, of boxes a week. It didnât hurt either that pink was a few shades short of red, a lucky color for the refugees, many of whom are ethnic Chinese. White, on the other hand, is the color of mourning.
Len Bell, president of Evergreen Packaging in La Mirada, first noticed the proliferation of pink boxes as a regional manager for Winchellâs in the early 1980s. Back in the Southland after a few years in Minnesota, Bell was amazed to see the doughnut business seemingly transformed overnight by Cambodian refugees, who proved quick studies and skillful businesspeople.
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"It honestly took every bit of strength in me to get through all 50 donuts as they were incredibly sweet but I'm so glad I did," said competitive eater Nela Zisser.
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This is a game about things on a table. I'm not even sure what I find so lovable about it—the time I went to put a cassette in its player and bluntly knocked the player clean out the window, maybe. And how, after that, I decided to throw everything out the window.
A coffee cup tumbles onto the floor, spilling its contents. The culprit: The piece of donut I was trying to dunk. I'll never know what would have happened if I had successfully dunked it; after all, I'm nothing but a disembodied hand that can be raised and lowered slightly. Maybe the very idea that I can dunk is an existential delusion.
I love the artwork; it reminds me a little bit of Torahhorse's Donut County, a flat, appealing approach to color that in my mind makes a good palette against which to consider materialism. And the moment I finally did pinch a cassette tape, get it into the small, flat player on the tabletop and a piquant tune filled the room, I felt I found myself.
I FIND MYSELF [________], by Lovely Rev, is available to download for free or for a suggested donation. Read the rest
Charles Barry, 48, of Pasco County, Florida was arrested yesterday for impersonating a law enforcement officer and improper exhibition of a firearm. He was attempting to get a discount at Dunkin' Donuts. Apparently he had been demanding a police discount for quite some time, including on weekends when visiting the establishment with his family, and the Dunkin Donuts manager stopped offering him the discount "because of his abuse.â Read the rest
