Special Events Help Drive Memorable Customer Experience at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts

Creating a memorable customer experience is such a critical piece of the brand loyalty puzzle. Just ask officials at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.

“We made substantial progress in transitioning our discounting program from a heavy reliance on everyday discounts to special events days,” Krispy Kreme CEO Tony Thompson explained during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on March 22, according to Seeking Alpha. “While the overall level of discounting was still higher than we would have preferred and impacted our company store margins, we were able to achieve our goal of having a lower overall percentage of discount transactions.”

Some of the special events from 2015 included Valentine’s Day, Hero Day, Talk Like A Pirate Day, and Day of the Dozens.

“Also, we took advantage of the success of our Carolina Panthers partnership and leveraged that with our Panthers Win Days,” Thompson added. “In addition to focusing more on special event days, we introduced tiered pricing for our limited time offers. Market research and consumer actions have demonstrated that guests are willing to pay a higher price for what they perceive to be more distinct and value-added doughnuts. Some examples of our LTO doughnuts this past year included our Valentine Love Bug, Spring Chick, Halloween Monster, Holiday Santa Belly, and Triple Chocolate Doughnut. Overall, our results were positive and we made progress in many areas, including improving store level margins over last year.”

Total revenue increased 4% for the fourth quarter and nearly 6% for the year. The company’s same-store sales increased slightly for the quarter and rose 2.4% for fiscal 2016, which marked its seventh consecutive year of same-store sales growth.

Krispy Kreme added a net 134 shops during the fiscal year, representing 14% systemwide growth.
“Our international business led the way with very solid double-digit unit growth and included new country openings in South Africa and Germany,” Thompson said. “We also signed development agreements for seven new countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Guatemala, Panama, Peru, Bolivia, and Myanmar.”

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