The Larder: Food Studies Methods from the American South

CHAPTER 9 Eating Technology at Krispy Kreme

CHAPTER 9 ▶ Eating Technology at Krispy Kreme carolyn de la peña These doughnuts touch people to the core of their being. lincoln spoor, Krispy Kreme franchisee, in Esquire, September 1998 Eating Technology at Krispy Kreme The social historian E. P. Thompson has argued that food should be understood not as a solid material for consumption but rather as a process within which every point offers“radiating complexities.” Thompson’s analysis concerns the dynamics of a working-class food revolt,yet his metaphor remains useful in considering how the act of eating engages an individual with the social processes embedded in production, labor, and consumption.We can easily think of food as a taste or unit of energy dissemination; yet when we eat we also ingest, literally, the cultural practices of how food is produced. Our decision, then, to eat or not to eat is driven not by an abstracted “neutral ” preference of texture, taste, or environment. It is based on our willingness to embrace particular people,practices,and places and reject others.In this essay I argue that Krispy Kreme doughnuts have radiated a particular set of cultural complexities about the place of machines in the South. By analyzing the consumer experience of Krispy Kreme from its inception in 1937 to its transsouthern turn of the 1990s,paying particular attention to the visible mechanization of Krispy Kreme stores and product, I argue that the doughnut has attained its cult status because of its environment as much as its taste. Since the 1930s, Krispy Kreme has embedded intimate visual access to complex machines within its consumer experience. This has been Eating Technology at Krispy Kreme 189 particularly advantageous for a product native to a region that has,since the postbellum period, actively sought to realize particular industrial dreams. This essay considers three periods in Krispy Kreme’s development: the company ’s inception and initial growth as a labor-driven“factory”between 1937 and 1958, the chain’s redesign and expansion as a labor-free mechanized system between 1958 and 1973, and its reconfiguration into a retail-oriented “doughnut theater” from the late 1980s to the present. By resituating this food product in its original regional and visual context, we illuminate the important role that technological production has played in creating and sustaining its consumer appeal. Krispy Kreme and the Promise of Southern Industry, 1937–1958 Krispy Kreme is a curious southern tradition. Unlike biscuits or black-eyed peas, doughnuts claim no lengthy lineage in the South. Doughnuts, or “fast nach kuchen,”were introduced to Pennsylvania by German immigrants and, with the exception of the French beignets of New Orleans, appear to have made few inroads in the South prior to 1937. In spite of the region’s lack of doughnut tradition, several food practices accommodated the snack’s successful transplantation. First, food is essential to southerners’sense of place, tradition,and memory. Ritual events and festivals depend on food for their performance,such as the hoppin’John,collard greens,fried okra,cornbread, and stewed tomatoes that mark NewYear’s for many southerners.The region was therefore well suited for a food that evoked a sense of place and could be connected with significant events. Second, many southerners possess a prominent sweet tooth. According to historian John Egerton,“southerners of every class and calling have coveted sweets since the Virginia colony was in its prime.” This desire intensified after the commercial production of baking powder and baking soda in the 1880s, making sweets cheaper to make and purchase. For a century, baked goods have been frequent indulgences for most classes of southerners and an expected component of a hospitable southern meal.Third,the ubiquitous craft of biscuit making inclined southerners to become connoisseurs of yeast-based sweets, skilled in judging minute distinctions in ingredient ratios, oven temperature, and makers’ skills. Finally, fried foods such as hush puppies—cornbread balls fried in 190 Carolyn de la Peña grease—regularly appeared in southern diets, thus easing acceptance for a food item that is, primarily, a sweet, fried ball of potato and flour. The idea of Krispy Kreme began in 1933 and took four years to come to fruition in Winston-Salem,North Carolina.That was the year that eighteenyear -old Vernon Rudolph’s uncle purchased a doughnut recipe from New Orleans chef Joe LeBeau.According to company lore, the younger Rudolph decided to base his business...