One Last Thing

Andrew Wells

FRIED DOUGH
TRACKING THE KRISPY KREME SCALPERS

It looked like a car crash. Driving west through the dark on C-470, I saw the long strand of red tail lights and thought someone never saw it coming, and now the cops, the leaking wrecks, and voyeurism are backing up the road below for half a mile. I saw four Douglas County cruisers at the front of the backup going disco with their strobes, spotlights and blue rooftop twinklers. Four police cars means carnage.

I was wrong. Four police cars means doughnuts.

Krispy Kreme has landed in Colorado, about four car dealerships and a Gart's Sports from Park Meadows mall. The Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based pastry corporation is the darling of investors and in this regard Lone Tree is a perfect location. If you were to dash blindfolded for 200 feet near Park Meadows, the resulting concussion would come from blunt impact with either a BMW SUV or day-trading kiosk. If a pre-fab, 24-hour, corporate operation that pumps out 57,600 doughnuts a day like bullets for the war effort makes sense anywhere, it makes sense in the southeast suburbs of Denver.

But big business is only part of the story here. Krispy Kreme is making a killing... think Moscow bread lines, only affluent, not wretched. But it seems hyenas and vultures are circling the bloated wildebeest carcass that is the disposable income of Tech Center drudges.

"Doughnut scalping?" I stammered.

"Doughnut scalping," repeated my editor, explaining my assignment.

The notion is absurd, or potentially lucrative; black market crullers and creme filleds, peddled to a captive market bogged down in ennui and car exhaust. After enduring the third loop of Cassidy's Oops, I Did It Again CD, without the visual aid of music video, it becomes clear as warm glaze how Dad could shell out triple-list-price for "a dozen goddamn doughnuts."

But with every enterprise comes risk. While Douglas County deputies are primarily on site to direct traffic, any shady activity could be met with a rapid, decisive response. I decided to ask one of the officers his assessment of the situation.

"I can't confirm or not confirm that," stated Deputy Adam Kataffo regarding scalping activity. "I think we've seen some scalpers. I can't tell you how much [the doughnuts] are going for." I was curious as to how suspected scalpers would be dealt with. Kataffo explained, "I haven't gotten a directive on that."

"[Doughnut scalping] has taken place," said Larry Jaro, owner of the Lone Tree Krispy Kreme franchise. "We know it has because people have told us. People buy themÑ it's the American wayÑ and then they go down and sell them to other people." I asked him what statement he would make to the doughnut scalpers in our midst. "I don't know. I haven't thought about it. I'd ask them not to do it," Jaro said.

But I didn't feel such an appeal was enough. Prevention must play a role as well. I contacted the leader in an industry synonymous with scalping, Ticketmaster, for counsel.

"Ticketmaster uses barcode technology," said the Ticketmaster spokesperson. "Basically if you buy scalped tickets ... when they scan them, the barcode reader will tell them right away that they're not real tickets."

"It would be difficult to barcode doughnuts," I pointed out.

The spokesperson did not respond. "You wouldn't have any idea of the best way to combat scalping of doughnuts?" I asked.

"Nope."

"'Nope. ' Not at all?"

"Doughnuts? Nooo, you'll have to ask Krispy Kreme," said the spokesperson.

I did ask Krispy Kreme, and they don't seem to know what to do, or even care. Why should they? At 2,400 doughnuts an hour, even an ambitious scalping operation would hardly affect profitability, which is the only thing that Krispy Kreme shareholders are concerned with.

Eddie Ermoyan, owner and operator of The Donut at the Arapahoe Village shopping center, wants to make money, too.

"I've been doing this for 30-some years," said Ermoyan. He worked for numerous doughnut chains before he opened his independent doughnut shop 15 years ago. "I've been baking every single night. That's it, my wife and I. No employees, so I have the consistency and quality in everything."

The atmosphere in The Donut is laid back. Customers quietly read and chat over newspapers, coffee and doughnuts. It's okay to linger here. The Donut is the kind of neighborhood shop where Tarantino characters would sit back and banter before they had to kill each other.

Krispy Kreme ambiance is like standing in a cattle paddock at a livestock auction combined with the glaring white fluorescent sterility of an operating room.

Objectivity is for ninnies. Ironically, the Krispy Kreme opening has boosted business at The Donut, at least for the moment.

"People wait there a while, get ticked off and they come here," said Ermoyan's wife, Mira. But the Disneyland lines won't last forever and that's when Krispy Kreme, the corporate machine, will get down to doing what it does best, and it's not making doughnuts (I had a KK doughnut and they're bland and smallish). Krispy Kreme is about making money and eliminating competition to make more money. Scalping won't stop that, The Donut won't stop that, and protests won't stop that.

We protested anyway.

I ran into my friend Matt at a gas station on Saturday night. Matt's underage and doesn't do alcohol anyway, so bars were right out. Matt called some friends, we piled into an Expedition and ended up gawking at the Krispy Kreme traffic jam. A chain of thought went off and we bought fluorescent orange poster board at the nearby Safeway (99 cents apiece, plenty are still in stock) and a couple dozen Entemann's doughnuts.

Wearing our signboards with slogans like, "Doughnut hurt to wait?" we marched down the line of cars, chanting and stuffing our faces for spite in the glare of headlights.

From every third or fourth car, people cheered us on.

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