Oh, how the mighty have fallen: Three months ago, local Krispy Kreme stores closed after a legal fight between the chain and its local franchisee, Lone Star Doughnuts; now, Lone Star's attempt to fill the doughnut hole seems to be on its last leg.
Lone Star began operating the ex-Krispy Kremes as Jumbles Dough Factory and Coffee Bar locations March 8, a move the company said would be a "fresh start" for the franchise. But now, some of the Jumbles locations aren't doing so well, the Houston Business Journal reports: At 930 Main St., Jumbles' downtown location, nobody answers the phone; at the Clear Lake and Missouri City stores, the phones have been disconnected; on Richmond Avenue, there's a notice taped to the door saying that the locks have been changed because the tenants didn't pay rent; and the Westheimer store, where all the baking is done for the area, is closed during business hours. What's more, suppliers to Jumbles — including H. Mills Duncan IV, president of the Duncan Coffee Co. — can't get anyone at Lone Star to answer their calls. "I don't have any idea what is going on," Duncan told the Journal. We're not business experts, but this doesn't sound like good news.
Part of the problem, analysts say, is that Krispy Kreme is a hard act to follow. Though the chain didn't get the saturation in Houston we expected, it had its die-hard fans — even Houstonist, a Shipley's fan through and through, was known to stop in for a few glazed doughnuts when it was Hot Doughnuts Now. But we suspect a bigger part of the problem was that Lone Star sounded like a pretty unmotivated group: As the Krispy Kreme-Lone Star contract unraveled, Lone Star was complaining that KK "pressured Lone Star to open new stores and ... forced it to buy unnecessary equipment." What? Krispy Kreme wanted its franchisee to expand and buy equipment? What are they, nuts?
Whatever happens to Jumbles — and we think we can guess what that'll be — it really doesn't matter. We still have Shipley's, and Krispy Kreme has vowed to return to the Houston market. Now if we could just get a Cafe du Monde ...
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