And lo, the town of Stow, Massachusetts is abandoned by Dunkin’ Donuts
WBZ NewsRadio documents a town's grief following the closures of its Dunkin' Donuts
Aux Features Dunkin' Donuts
In the future, historians will look back at September 2022 as the beginning of the end for the town of Stow, Massachusetts. The final pages of Stow’s story will be written about the Munchkin crumb trail leading from the closure of its Dunkin’ Donuts stores and the ensuing departure of a population who, as a news report shows us, have no reason to live in a place that Dunkin’ has turned away from.
WBZ NewsRadio’s Matt Shearer tweeted his look into this sad tale beginning with footage of a cigarette butt lying next to a Dunkin’-branded piece of litter and news that Stow has been forsaken by the franchised coffee and donut gods. Two citizens confirm the news.
“There is no more Dunkin’ Donuts in Stow,” one man says.
“Absolutely none,” says another.
“Those bastards,” adds a final interviewee.
Shearer explains that Stow previously had two Dunkins but now has to drive into nearby Maynard in order to buy coffees covered with whipped cream and syrup. The result is widespread sadness—an outpouring of grief over what has been taken from Stow’s population.
“Yeah, it sucks,” a young woman says in the clip. “There’s nothing fun to do and Dunkin’ Donuts was the one place where everyone likes to go.” When asked if it’s worth moving away from Stow because of the Dunkin’ departure, she responds “yeah” without hesitation.
“I’m sad. Sad for the people of Stow,” another woman tells Shearer. A bee then flies into her face and she adds that her heart goes out, too, “for this bee.”
If only Ben Affleck would spare some of his wealth to personally finance restoring these extensions of an institution that’s given him so much over the years. After all, he, more than anyone else with the resources to help, should know the pain Stow is experiencing right now.
Send Great Job, Internet tips to [email protected]
105 Comments
Imagine being in a place where your only choice of donuts is Dunkin.
Heaven?!
Do you hate donuts?Maybe itâs a regional thing but around here Dunkinâ is a mediocre fast food place that happens to have a few donuts in a dimly lit case behind the cashier. Theyâre never fresh because theyâre delivered by truck, as opposed to actual donut shops that make their own. Â Worst of all, I ordered an old-fashioned and they gave me a plain cake, which ought to be against the law.
I honestly donât like a lot of the fancy artisanal donut places. Sometimes I get a good donut and sometimes I get some weird thing they were coming up with. At Dunkin I know what all the donuts taste like, I know what I like and its always that way. Not to mention the fancy places always charge way more for donutsÂ
Letâs be honest, too: thereâs only so far you can take a donut. After that the returns not only diminish, but actually start negatively impacting said starch torus. I mean, their simplicity and cheapness is part of the charm, and the usual hipster bullshit of adding some token Fancy Ingredients with zero thought as to why, gets grating. Especially for the price.
It IS a regional thing! My nephew is a baker for DD here in lovely MA, where there is still giant stand mixers and dough and such, but going to Dunkins OUTSIDE the northeast and the quality is greatly declined, as they are shipped frozen and âheated on trays in giant ovensâ in the morning. So you arenât wrong. Just gotta visit New England more often!
they did used to make their own on the premises, largely. once when i was a kid my parents hauled me and my brother up in the middle of the night to go watch my uncle âmake the donutsâ. those chocolate glazed still warm from the oven were quite good.Yeah, nowadays they are pretty crappy though and trucked in from elsewhere
No
Despite being a chain, the quality of the donuts in Dunkin varies a lot. Especially in places outside their main concentration (the Northeast US) you can find absolutely terrible Dunkins. But there is a real reason why people in Boston and surroundings are fond of them and often prefer them to âartisianal” donuts made by hipsters.
But there is a real reason why people in Boston and surroundings are fond of them and often prefer them to âartisianalâ donuts made by hipsters.Is it because they donât course six bucks each, arenât covered in eight layers of toppings purely designed for the âgram, and you donât have to line up for three hours to be served by some bitchy white dude with four eyebrow piercings and a full sleev tattoo to get them?
Nah, itâs because theyâre all raised in the DD cult. I canât fathom the point of getting a donut at a place with such terrible coffee.
I really hate the reductionist argument that there are only âjust normal, donât ask for nothinâ fancyâ or âhipsterizedâ choices for things. When I lived in Boston, the best place was easily Twin Donuts, an old-school diner-looking place where locals shot the shit over coffee for hours. No hipster affectations, nor a shitty chain.
https://www.bu.edu/bhr/2015/02/01/i-dream-of-doughnuts-one-familys-sweet-saga-of-the-american-dream/
FAHKING RIGHT YEW AH, SUR!
The one by me likes to not heat the sandwiches. I thought it was a one time thing, but no. The cheese is not even melted. There are legitimate reasons they close, but usually quality is pretty consistent.Â
The problem is right there in the word âsandwiches.â Stick with buying what they specialize in. Itâs not Dunkinâ Sandwiches.
And now Iâm craving a Boston Kreme.
i question the wisdom of getting a sandwich from DD in the 1st place. there are invariably better options available, whether you want a regular sandwich or a breakfast sandwich. and dd sandwiches arenât particularly cheap either compared to fast food competitors
This is where you take it? Really??? It is egg and bacon on a croissant. Is Wendyâs really killing it? You donât think they have the technology?  It is not rocket surgery. Convenience often a factor when time is not available for other options, and if the 1.50 difference for a sandwich is a truly mitigating factor? You should eat at home.
I am from suburban Boston and now live in the Midwest, and I can confirm this. The Dunks in Wisconsin are awful.
All of the Dunkins in chicagoland are pretty uniform. Theyâre not terrible, just thoroughly mediocre. The icing is a sugar paste, the frostings are meh, and the boston creme filling tastes chemical-y.
I donât eat donuts anymore for health reasons, but Dunkinâs always had my favorite apple fritter, they were usually kind of well done, with a nice crisp to them, which is how I like them. But really, for most donuts, it was Krispy Kreme, and then everyone else, including the local joints. The one exception might have been a place called Polar Donuts, they used potato bread, which gave the donuts a unique texture.
Much less the only place for fun, as the young woman claimed (and I believe accurately).
French cruller is good, but I pass on the rest.Â
Whatâs wrong with their fried sugar dough with sugar icing?
Huh, there really is a snob for every possible product!
Imagine living somewhere for 25 years where your only choice for donuts is store bought?
Houston (city population 2.3M, metro population 6.6M) has only 3 Dunkin Donuts and one Krispy Kreme. Hometown favorite, Shipleyâs, has kept Dunkin from expanding and effectively ran Krispy Kreme out of town in the early 2000s. Itâs the standard go-to before work, after a soccer game, etc. Of course, we also have a tiny number of âartisanâ donut places, as well as a lot of Asian-owned single-unit neighborhood places.
Come breakfast in Houston. We wonât make you go to Dunkinâ!
H-Town homies, represent!
Actually, there are many layers to doughnuts in New England. Thereâs Dunks, thereâs Honey Dew, and then a lot of great independent places, with my favorite being Allieâs in Rhode Island. On top of this, there are cider doughnuts in autumn. Dunkin holds a special place in peopleâs hearts because they grew up with it, thereâs one always close by (important when itâs cold or snowy and you donât want to go far), and they arenât bad. Not great, but not bad. I live in Seattle now, where there are no Dunkins and the doughnuts are generally bad and overpriced. I even find myself being nostalgic for their horrendous half cold, half burning hot, rubber consistency breakfast sandwiches every now and then.
Lifelong New Englander here, who remembers commercials with Fred (âTime to make the donuts!â). The place was solid, but is now the worldâs foremost purveyor of brown water and vaguely-foodish breakfast things. Itâs shit, is what Iâm saying. I rejoice when I see a Honey Dew whenever Iâm out and about.
That was back in the day when they actually made donuts on site, now they are all delivered, which means the selection gets worse as the day goes on.Â
The same thing has happened to their Canadian rival, Tim Hortons. They too used to make the donuts on location until a few years ago but âefficiency expertsâ suggested to corporate that it would be cheaper to have shared bakeries that would ship the donuts out to stores.
Do places like this never question the âeffinciency expertsâ about the consequences of the loss of quality, or do execs just assume theyâll have exited on their golden parachute before the consequences of the lowered quality start to affect the bottom line?
Sounds like you answered your own question there, OldManOfTheMountain.
Iâm so sick of what Timâs has become, Iâd almost welcome a Dunkin opening around here just out of desperation. At least there might be a couple of other types/flavors to be disappointed at the lack of freshness in, and Timâs current crop of sandwiches has nothing I want, I might at least get a regular cold-cut option. And some different takes on the whole over-sweet mass-market take on iced coffee drinks, even though summerâs ending.
Damn, this poor bugger must be spinning in his grave
Some stores still bake, the ones they call “heritage”. They are rare and only in New England, but they do exist! My nephew is a baker and operates a massive stand mixer at 4am
Even Honey Dew is a shadow of its former self. It’s much lower quality than it used to be and they seem to be struggling.
Fellow New Englander as well and I think the only good thing thatâs come out of Dunkin in the last few years is this skit from SNL.
I bought my friend a Dunkin Donuts gift card with a picture of Donny and Dewey from that SNL Dunkin skit on it, and itâs my favorite thing ever. CUTCHA NAILS FAH GAWDS SAKE.
still cracks me up, altho the sam adams one with Bill Burr is even better (and features Mikey playing the same townie, apparently!)
Bill Burr doing Samuel Jackson is the best though.
HoneyDew used to have red bull slushies, if I remember correctly. Never tried the donuts.Â
their mocha madness, a blend of coffee and either hot chocolate or chocolate milk, was pretty good once in a while. very sweet of coursei always found honey dew donuts to be too dense. you do feel like you are getting more bang for your buck i guess but the airier DD donuts are better overall imo. neither is particularly great
Itâs really terrible now. In college I would drink an enormous D&D coffee (âThe Great Oneâ) every day and loved it. Now I canât touch it. The quality has plummeted. Most gas stations have better coffee and food.Â
Iâve not yet forgiven DD for buying, absorbing, and then eliminating Mister Donut. Even as a kid I appreciated how much better Mister Donut was to DD.
People like to shit on Dunkin now but they forget or donât know that Dunkin used to be good. It earned the loved. Then went through rapid expansion and dilution of quality. Folks who went to Dunkin pre-2007ish have a strong attachment because it was good! (it does now suck)
The issue is they over franchised and, more to the point, rebuilt their franchise model so they did not have to make donuts in store anymore. So now you are at the whim of the franchise owner on how often he gets donuts shipped in from the distribution bakery as well as how far away that bakery is. If you are in a big metro area, you are still gonna get pretty fresh donuts but a Dunkin in the middle of nowhere is not.
And because of that you cannot actually get a âDunkinââ Dunkinâ Dounut.
The donuts are the most visible but the coffee is not as good as it used to be either.
All.of these problems happened after the company was sold to the French.
The gods honest truth right here.
Wow, Iâm an idiot. I couldnât make sense of the headline because I kept reading âloâ as âIoâ, as in the moon of Jupiter. I could understand why Dunkin would abandon plans for a location there. Probably not a lot of foot traffic.
It didnât strike me until I read your comment, but now itâs all I can see.
đ
But it would be well defended by Sean Conneryâs Marshall William OâNeill (âOn Jupiterâs moon, heâs the only lawâ as the tagline for 1981’s Outland went)
Itâs actually spelled OâNiel.
Serifs have a purpose, dammit! Theyâre not just decorative!
i think i remember the DD logo appearing on the monolith at the end of the 2010 movie
I got on the google machine and there is literally TWELVE Dunkins in a 5 mile radius of Stow. 1stworldproblems.
You must not understand that this article was humorous in nature. Nuance must be difficult for you to read here.
I figured it was. Odd to have to on this site than maybe The Takeout. Plus a little bit of blind rage for having to live in that state for 13 years.
wow, the mere reminder of living in MA for 13 years gave you blind rage? i wonder where you live now. hope its better
You going to scold every single comment?
But who will scold the scolder?
Same guy who served the servants? Oh wait, heâs dead.
Oh the irony of the spider scolding others for making too many comments.
FAHK YEW!
Were the Stow residents who were interviewed in on the joke?
Seems that way – even just for the bee comment
Yeah but when you are on DUI No. 2 and still wicked pissed from the night before, 5 miles is a long way to drive on your lawnmower to get your coffee and cruller.
âPissedâ doesnât mean drunk in Massachusetts. It means angry. âWastedâ or âfucked upâ would be a better fit.
âThereâs nothing fun to do and Dunkinâ Donuts was the one place where everyone likes to go.â
Geez, sounds like a bummer of a town.
If it was the one play everyone liked to go, why did it go out of business?
They have a thriving community theater scene?
Theyâre running a Cormac McCarthy adaptation now, âStow Country for Do Nuts.â
âItâs the one place everyone liked to go…..âTO THE BATHROOM
Triumph, ladies and gentlemen! Triumph the insult comic dog! Give him a big hand please!
Outside, up the wall.Â
They just went there and hung out in the parking lot jeering at others different from them. Ah, small town, âmurica.
You realize this article was VERY tongue-in-cheek, right? Also, Stow is a super boring place. The only reason to go there is if you live there.
Itâs hard to tell around here sometimes.
It sounds like the kind of town Jon Bon Jovi would sing about getting the F out of as soon as he traded his six-string for some wheels.
(Jon calls guitars âsix-stringâ a lot. At least in his songs.)
Or if your soccer team is traveling there đ
Stow is like 10-15Â minute drive away from my house and Iâve literally NEVER had a reason to go there. Itâs cute but it is a very, very sleepy town.
Thereâs a lot of small towns like that in Massachusetts (and probably across the NE). I live in one, and work in another (this one in Southern New Hampshire, where the local hangout is the Walmart parking lot.)
Sadly, huge chunks of this country now no longer have many, if
any, locally owned businesses including restaurants. Itâs nothing but
chains and people have become so used to it they no longer even know what they
are missing. Itâs only going to get worse as the pandemic dramatically shifted
consumer habits toward take out orders and most of the big chains are planning
new locations with little or no dining areas. Many designs have take out
windows only. You canât even enter the business.Dunkinâ Donuts in fact has new stores that are nothing more than
cubes with a pick up box on the side. Thereâs not even an order kiosk. You have
to place your order and pay for it through their app then pick up your stuff
from a little window that pops up when you drive up to it. You never see or
speak to a human being.
sounds like Schrodingerâs Dunkin Donuts
Worth noting there is still a Dunkin in Stow(e), Vermont:
https://locations.dunkindonuts.com/en/vt/stowe/911-s-main-st/348703?utm_source=google&utm_medium=local&utm_campaign=localmaps&utm_content=348703
And in Stow, Ohio.https://locations.dunkindonuts.com/en/oh/stow/3027-graham-rd/353699
Dunkin Donuts is really popular in New England. It would be almost like a Canadian town losing their Tim Hortons.
For those whom have never lived in New England, Dunkinâ Donuts is to New England what Starbucks is to every place else. People mostly go their for their various coffee like beverages.
Rock on, Wesley Willis.
I live in Vermont, and I had to think hard about where the closest Starbucks is located. I think thereâs one in the supermarket in Barre? Chains of any kind arenât exactly abundant in this state, but I can think of at least 7 Dunkin Donuts within an hour of where I live. That may not sound like much around a city or suburban region for most of the country, but consider that it would be rare to find more than one or two franchises of any chain within that radius in Vermont. Heck, I can only picture 3 McDonald’s within that same range.
i remember when Krispy Kreme tried to make inroads in MA and failed miserably
Dude, I just love Mattâs reporting. Hereâs his story about local grocery store chain Market Basket being closed in Billericahttps://www.tiktok.com/@wbznewsradio/video/7109087354370985262
Yo the market basket debacle was a big deal!
Also there are 3 market baskets on the same road going through Billerica đ
Major echoes of this classic:
In fairness, it doesnât look like there are many places to eat in town. Not even a McDonaldâs. My guess is that DD was the local watering hole/bullshittery for seniors. And sure, five miles isnât farâif youâve got a car. I guess that Iâm sympathetic in part because my wife comes from a town that has a Subway, a seasonal DQ, and nothing else. One has to drive about 15 miles for signs of civilization. I always used to joke that Chillicothe, IL is the Mt. Pilot to the Mayberry that is her hometown.Â
yeah the larger DDâs that actually have seating areas are usually dominated by seniors meeting up for coffee. not as much as in the old days of course. but the idea that DD is the only fun place to go in town is a bit over the top
Despite the cult-like following in New England, their donuts are terrible, bagels are even worse, and the coffee is grotesquely overrated.Â
Lol this is unexpected local news on here as Iâm sitting in a parking lot in concord next to a dunkins. I highly doubt any will be as affected by this more than shamokin residents đ
Holy fucking lol those interviews. â…if I have any legal work, I meet with my attorney there…âHow often does that guy need to meet with his attorney?.
I have family in Shamokin, and learning that Dutch Smith likes Dunkâs because he can meet his attorney there totally tracks. Â
Meanwhile I live in a metro area of about 1.3 million people and Dunkin didnât survive here either, dipping in and back out of the city in under 10 years a while back. We donât even have a Krispy Kreme or any other major chain donut shops. People just love the local places too much.
Meh Iâll take Shipleyâs doughnuts over Dunkin or Krispy Creme all day long.
There are two in nearby Maynard. Thereâs also one in nearby Sudbury where the sign is beige or grey or something
to match the personality types that live there. The 65+ senior living offers a morning shuttle to the Dunkinâ Donuts in Acton every morning, too. The water in that Stow
plaza is undrinkable (itâs a fairly recent development), so instead of the landlord repairing it, the
restaurants have gone out of business and âFor Leaseâ signs have gone
up. That whole section of the Metro West is…odd. Itâs kind of
like Sleepy Hollow meets Johnny Appleseed for about a 10-15 mile radius, excluding Hudson.
As a resident of stow there is more to do then eat dunkin donuts. Its filled with himing and walking trails. Itâs quite and a cozy little town. This is a poor article and attacks the reputation of stow. Infact houses in stow are flying off the market at way above avg price. People want to move to stow. As someone who did media and journalism in college this is also just a poorly written article absolutely no care to say anything other then poor opinions