Krispy Kreme Doughnuts

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Eastwood Mall Krispy Kreme location, about 1967

Krispy Kreme is a doughnut company founded in Kentucky in 1937, which for many years had shops located mainly in the southeastern United States. After a false start in Birmingham in 1952, the company has had a continued presence in the Birmingham area since 1958, and today has retail stores in Hoover and the East Lake/Roebuck area.

History

Krispy Kreme first sold doughnuts in Birmingham for a brief period in 1952 when Mike Gentry, the owner of Dixie Cream Donuts at 205 18th Street North in downtown Birmingham, announced he had been granted an exclusive franchise for the Birmingham area and was converting his shop to a Krispy Kreme. A lawsuit from the Dixie Cream Flour Company alleging unfair competition and trademark infringement quickly followed, with a federal judge eventually deciding that "Krispy" sounded too similar to "Dixie". As a result of the lawsuit, Krispy Kreme removed their newly-installed equipment from Gentry's shop, putting Gentry out of business.

The first successful Krispy Kreme location in the Birmingham area appeared in 1958 at the Five Points West Shopping City, apparently without objection by Dixie Cream. A second location opened in 1960 in the East Lake/Roebuck area.

A third shop opened in 1967 on an outparcel of Eastwood Mall, at the intersection of Crestwood Boulevard and Oporto-Madrid Boulevard, one of the busiest corners in the state.

Bill McAleer became the franchisee for Birmingham and 13 surrounding counties in 1982 when his family led a group of investors in buying the Krispy Kreme company from Beatrice Foods of Chicago.

The Eastwood location closed at the end of August 1987, after landowner Jim Wilson and Associates decided not to renew their lease, opting for a higher-paying tenant, Olive Garden, at the site. In response, Krispy Kreme enlarged the Roebuck location and moved the Eastwood manufacturing equipment there. Shortly thereafter, the original Five Points West location closed as well, with McAleer explaining "it turned out that the same people who owned Eastwood also owned Five Points West. We just couldn't deal with them, so we closed that store". This left the Roebuck location as the only Krispy Kreme in the Birmingham area.

After a lengthy search for another suitable location, in 1994 McAleer opened a take-out-only shop in a trailer next to a Putt-Putt Golf Course on Montgomery Highway in Hoover. By this time, Krispy Kreme shops featured a distinctive "Hot Now" neon sign, indicating to passersby when hot doughnuts were rolling off the line. The success of this shop eventually led to McAleer purchasing the former Putt-Putt site and converting the Hoover location into a permanent store.

In 1997, McAleer opened another shop in Midfield on the site of a former Shoney's Big Boy. In 1999, Bill's son Vince McAleer took over the Birmingham stores from his father.

In 2011, Krispy Kreme reached its high-water mark in the Birmingham area with the opening of a fourth shop, off Highway 280, near the intersection of Cahaba Valley Road/Alabama State Highway 119 in the Greystone area.

In subsequent years, McAleer sold the Birmingham franchises back to the new corporate owner, JAB Holding Company, which then closed two shops: the Midfield location in 2016, and the Highway 280 location in December 2022. The latter closing, despite brisk business, was due to the company's new focus on selling its doughnuts in retail locations like supermarkets and convenience stores, rather than in its own walk-up shops. Today the 1st Avenue North and Montgomery Highway locations are the only two Krispy Kreme stores left in the Birmingham area. The former Highway 280 location is scheduled to open as a Cookie Fix in 2024.

Current locations

Former locations

References

External links

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