ry? Patrick McIntyre: I’m a fun guy, so I want to have fun, and selling shoes or socks or some other soft good, or even a hard good, isn’t as much fun, I think, as some of the brands that have more equity to them.  So I’m attracted to fun brands, oftentimes fun is related to things that are, to your point, sweet, and I just want to be around brands that can have an impact positively on other people and are globally recognized. IR: What has been the most surprising part about working with Krispy Kreme? PM: The surprise for me was how hard it is to make a really good doughnut. You think it’s easy, right? We make billions of doughnuts a year, so to get every single one right is harder than you’d think. Water temperature, oil temperature, fry time – there are so many things that go into the [doughnut-making] model. Having hundreds of locations where we make the doughnuts and maintaining quality [at all of them] is harder to do than I had originally thought, walking into [the role].  I would say what has surprised me more than anything really, well not surprised me but validated me, has been seeing how people love this brand. There’s this cult understanding and following, even if they [the customer] don’t consume the brand more than once or twice a year.  They’re like, ‘Oh, I love Krispy Kreme,’ and no matter where I go, if I’m carrying doughnuts, people stop me. ‘Where did you get those?’ If I think about some of our competitors or some of the other doughnut brands or coffee brands that are out there, people aren’t asking them where they got it…So I think that [recognition] makes us different and has been a really pleasant surprise [to me]. IR: Krispy Kreme is almost 87 years old. How has it been reinventing itself for the new generation? PM: To me, it’s not about reinvention. It’s about being true to who you are and being culturally relevant. So we have been making the original glazed doughnut for 87 years, the same yeast and the recipe has not changed, and people love it. Don’t fix what’s not broken.  If you think about the culturally relevant moments, what are the things that a younger or up-and-coming generation wants to see?  As an example, I think about Hailey Bieber. Last year, out of nowhere, she called us and said ‘Hey, I’m going to launch a strawberry lipstick [the Rhode Strawberry Glaze Peptide Lip Treatment] and I’m basing it after [Krispy Kreme’s] original glazed doughnuts, but I want you to make a strawberry glazed doughnut, can you do that?’ And we were like, absolutely.  Those are the types of things that when I think of your question on how we stay relevant, it’s being in that realm of culturally relevant moments that resonate with a different generation. IR: What has been your favorite part of working in the retail industry overall? PM: Retail, to me, has just been who I am my entire life. It’s my parents’ business, it’s their legacy, and it’s what I enjoy doing.  You know, we’ve [society] done it [retail work] since the dawn of time. First, we started bartering goods and services to one another, then we invented money, and I think retail is going to be here forever. It’s not necessarily what we buy, but how we buy it that has really changed over time. It’s an attractive industry to me, and for lack of better words, I’m more or less good at it, so stick with what you’re good at. IR: What tools are in your business toolbox? PM: It’s our people, they are 100 percent the sharpest tools that we have.  And I think what excites me on that question, to use your tool analogy, is that you get to sharpen your tools and we’re doing that by investing in our people.  We’re investing in leadership development and training in our shops, and keeping those tools as sharp as they possibly can be is 100 percent what makes our business work the way it does.  That is really what attracted me here [to Krispy Kreme] and what keeps me here. IR: Perhaps the toughest question of them all: What is your favorite Krispy Kreme product? PM: So easy, the pumpkin spice cake doughnut is to die for and it only comes once a year. It’s just so good. This story first appeared in the June 2024 issue of Inside Retail US magazine.