(WTF???) Carlyle, Partners to Buy Dunkin' Donuts Parent

A trio of investors that includes the District's Carlyle Group won the bidding for Dunkin' Brands Inc. yesterday, agreeing to pay more than $2.4 billion for the owner of the Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins chains.

Two Boston-based private equity firms, Bain Capital LLC and Thomas H. Lee Partners LP, combined with Carlyle on the deal for the Massachusetts-based company. The team beat competing bids from groups led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and J.P. Morgan Partners LLC.

The deal will make Dunkin' Donuts an American-owned company after 15 years under French ownership. The new owners are expected to retain current management under chief executive Jon L. Luther, and senior management is expected to buy a small stake in the company.

Dunkin' Brands, which includes 6,000 Dunkin' Donuts stores, 5,400 Baskin-Robbins ice cream shops and 400 Togo's sandwich restaurants on the West Coast, booked most of its $4.8 billion in 2004 sales in the United States.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121200963.html?nav=hcmodule

:shrug: I don't get that. I heard about this a while ago so why would they buy it? :shrug:

Well, maybe this is what power grab is all about: take over media, telecommunications, armaments, transportation, food; rule the world.

SOOOOOOOOOOO much better

has a great balance sheet compared to, say, Krispy Kreme, and has good growth. It also doesn't have the expenses of a hangout location like Starbucks. The French management seems to have done it well.

I don't like the coffee or the donuts so much, but I like it better than Starbucks, and this might portend yet another sugary choice on the Turnpike or the airport now that Cinnabon seems to being going downhill.

And all that transfat that federal nutritional labeling requirements removed out of store-bought snack foods HAS to go SOMEWHERE ...

:shrug:

Perhaps they just feel they can make some money by investing in a profitable business.

Or just shrewed.

This snip is referring to the Depression Era.

"A doughnut cost less than a nickel, within reach of most of the Depression's victims. They were base and beloved. In the 1934 film It Happened One Night, rugged newspaperman Clark Gable actually has to teach runaway heiress Claudette Colbert how to dunk. Often, doughnuts were sold with their own can-do philosophy. Singer Cindy Hutchins' mother recalls buying them after seeing movies at Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Theater. They came with a slip of paper to bolster the downtrodden: "As you go through life make this your goal: Watch the doughnut, not the hole.""

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues98/mar98/object_mar98.html

Who knows why these monsters do what they do - but you can be damn sure there is an evil purpose.

Is there anything the repukes don't ruin for us? DD is so much better than Starbucks.

smokier blend.

Now, there was a period, around 97-98, when I was disgusted by Starbucks, qua coffee. I'd noticed that everytime I bought one, it tasted yucky old. One day, I had gotten one that was absolutely undrinkable and I just said that's it, I'm through. It also seemed like around this time that the stores didn't seem well maintained (nasty serving areas, bad cream, etc.). I don't know what happened but somehow they seemed to clean up their act (the stores were better managed and the coffee returned to its fresh-tastingness).

Dunkin Donuts, on the other hand, also has good, standard coffee (nothing fancy but still delicious). You know what's funny? About 2 weeks ago, I was just reading about DD in New York Magazine. The article (I didn't read the whole thing) was on how the marketing folks were embarking on a new, aggressive campaign to lure people in. Who would've thought that the Carlysle Group would be a factor???

I'd hate to boycott it, but the nearest one is 20 miles away, so perhaps it won't be so bad.

Opps I meant that for foreverdem. Speaking of coffee I've obviously haven't had a enough of it.