A recipe, a borrowed car and a hole in the wall.

Krispy Kreme traces its start to 1937 and to Vernon Rudolph, who set up a doughnut business in a rented building in what is now historic Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The Encyclopedia of North Carolina, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2006 and carried on NCpedia, says Rudolph’s uncle, a store owner in Paducah, Kentucky, had bought a yeast-raised doughnut recipe and the Krispy Kreme name from a chef in New Orleans, and hired his nephew to sell doughnuts door to door. Family members went on to open shops in Nashville, Tennessee, Charleston, West Virginia, and Atlanta.

English Wikipedia says Rudolph and his uncle moved to Nashville in 1934 and opened “The Krispy Kreme Doughnut Company” in a rented store there before Rudolph struck out on his own. The encyclopedia says that in Winston-Salem he and two partners made doughnuts and delivered them in a 1936 Pontiac fitted with a rack in the back seat, selling to local grocery stores. As demand for his fresh doughnuts grew, the encyclopedia says, Rudolph cut a hole in the wall of the Old Salem building and installed a sales window, turning a wholesale bakery into a shop. CNBC, reporting in May 2021, likewise dates the company’s start to a store in North Carolina in 1937 that sold doughnuts to local grocery stores.

The name itself is spelled for effect. Wikipedia describes Krispy Kreme as a deliberate non-standard spelling of “crispy cream,” chosen for marketing, and says the company’s logo was designed by Benny Dinkins, a local architect. Wikipedia also notes that the original logo is still used as an alternative mark.

The encyclopedia says that in the 1940s and 1950s the company standardised its product by making the Krispy Kreme mix centrally, supplying it to a growing network of doughnut and coffee shops, and building its own doughnut-making machinery. It records that Lewis Rudolph, Vernon’s brother, served as vice president after the company was incorporated in 1947.

Beatrice, the franchisees, JAB and Nasdaq.

Before any change of owner, the business spread across its home region. Wikipedia says expansion in the 1950s included an early store in Savannah, Georgia, and that by the 1960s Krispy Kreme was known throughout the Southeast and had begun to move into other areas.

Ownership has changed several times. The Encyclopedia of North Carolina says that after Vernon Rudolph’s death in 1973 the company was reorganised and sold in 1976 to Beatrice Foods of Chicago; Wikipedia adds that Krispy Kreme became a wholly owned subsidiary of Beatrice and that its headquarters stayed in Winston-Salem. In 1982, both sources say, a group of franchisees bought the business back from Beatrice.

Growth beyond the Southeast followed. The encyclopedia records the company’s arrival in New York City in 1996 and California in 1999, and both it and Wikipedia say the company opened in Canada in December 2001. Krispy Kreme became a public company in April 2000, listing on Nasdaq before moving to the New York Stock Exchange in 2001, Wikipedia says. In 2009 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued a cease-and-desist order against the company over its earlier accounting, Wikipedia records.

In 2016 the company was taken private by JAB Holding Company; Wikipedia says the transaction closed on 27 July 2016, and CNBC reported in May 2021 that the doughnut chain had been bought by the privately owned investment firm that year. Wikipedia says the company moved its corporate headquarters to Charlotte, North Carolina, in December 2017, while Winston-Salem kept the bulk of its operational departments and a support centre.

The return to the stock market came five years after the JAB deal. CNBC reported on 4 May 2021 that Krispy Kreme had confidentially filed for an initial public offering, and Wikipedia says the company began trading on Nasdaq on 1 July 2021 under the name Krispy Kreme, Inc., replacing the earlier corporate name Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc.

Design and documentation.

A quick-service brand is met first from the road and only then at the counter. Its identity has to work on a pole sign seen from a moving car, on a roofline, on a lit window after dark, on a drive-through menu board read in a few seconds, and on a cup, bag or box that leaves with the customer. Signage, neon and backlit panels, building shapes, uniforms, mascots and printed packaging all carry the same name, often in very different sizes and materials.

Because many of these restaurants are run by franchisees rather than by the company that owns the name, a sign, a menu board or a paper bag may be ordered, installed and replaced locally, while the mark itself is set by the franchisor. Names, owners and headquarters can also change over the decades as chains are sold, merged or taken private, even when the sign out front looks much the same.

Each guide separates what independent, dated sources record from what the company says about itself — who started it and where, who owns it now, and how its signs, logos and packaging have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Green roofs, a lit sign and a window onto the line.

The Krispy Kreme identity was built as much in architecture as in print. The Encyclopedia of North Carolina says that by the 1960s Krispy Kreme stores were visible throughout the Southeast with green-tiled roofs and glowing signs reading “Hot Doughnuts Now.” The sales window Rudolph cut into his Old Salem building had already let customers buy doughnuts at the place where they were made.

The company later engineered the promise into its shops. Wikipedia says that in the early 2010s Krispy Kreme began developing stores with tunnel ovens that allow an all-day “Hot Now” hot-doughnut experience, rather than one tied to set production times.

The brand’s history has also been preserved institutionally. The encyclopedia says company artefacts were donated in 1997 to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, an event it cites to Smithsonian magazine’s March 1998 article “Ring King.” Advertising came later than signage: Wikipedia says the company relied on informal promotion such as word of mouth until 2006, when it moved into television and radio with a “Share the Love” campaign built around heart-shaped doughnuts. Wikipedia also records fundraising boxes sold by community groups, a scheme it dates to 1955.

For a design guide, Krispy Kreme shows how a brand can make its own production visible — through a window, a coloured roof and a sign that switches on when the line is running — and keep that idea through new owners, a new headquarters city and two stock-market listings. Compare it with Dunkin’, another American doughnut chain that has reworked its name and lettering, and Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee-and-doughnut chain with its own red script. For this guide we use roof green, sign red and glaze cream with a script, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Krispy Kreme’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.