New 24-hour store proved so popular it had to close overnight, with many explanations posited for the craze
A hole in the national psyche, a yearning for community, an addiction to sugar, a triumph of marketing – Ireland has competing explanations for the great Krispy Kreme doughnut rush.
Something has impelled thousands of people to besiege the US doughnut chain’s first outpost in Ireland, with traffic jams snaking to the north-west Dublin store, but nobody is quite sure what is behind it.
Hundreds queued overnight for the launch on 26 September and the throngs have kept coming. An all-night cacophony of honking horns and a carnival-like atmosphere at the drive-in has forced managers to shut the doors from 11.30pm until dawn to give the neighbourhood of Blanchardstown some respite.
Speaking on Tuesday lunchtime as customers streamed past, Alex Drysdale, Krispy Kreme’s Ireland country director, said: “It’s been unprecedented. We expected to be popular, just not this popular.”
Nudging her Citroën towards the drive-in kiosk, Una, who declined to give her last name, said her children had begged her to take them. “They’re saying everyone at school is getting them. It’s been bonkers, it’s just mad. I don’t understand it. It’s as if we’ve never seen a doughnut before,” she said.
Ireland has been munching doughnuts since long before the Dunkin’ Donuts franchises appeared in the 1990s. Smaller stores with names such as the Rolling Donut, Aungier Danger and Offbeat Donuts have proliferated in recent years, prompting declarations of “peak doughnut” in 2017.
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