I.
For a few years in high school, I worked at Dunkin' Donuts. I wore a monstrous orange polo and voluminous khaki pants, the kind with pleats in the rib-cage-high waist and tapered ankles I rolled up four times over because I was far smaller than the size small assigned to me. The joke in my family was that my English teacher—a woman who had been in semi-retirement for at least ten years, who wore another teacher's ID around her neck because she feared photography's power to capture the soul, who seemed to be only a pair of pale, nervous hands emerging from the folds of her clothing—wore the same pants. Unlike mine, her pants were freely chosen. At work, I looked something between an onion and a pumpkin: rounded, earth-toned, billowing in sugar-coated wafts.
The location I worked at was the largest of five in my hometown. The town was and is a New England summer tourist trap without a consistent movie theater, with a single McDonalds, a single Burger King, and a single Dairy Queen that served only ice cream from a walk-up window between Memorial Day and Labor Day. When I was ten, my older sister went to visit family in Texas and came home reporting curly fries and Frosties, and suddenly the world seemed so large, so unimaginable in its variations.
My Dunkin' Donuts, as we called it, was the new one. It had full-wall windows with seasonal decals, not the dingy little rectangles of the old buildings. It had central air conditioning. It had a drive-thru. From the inside, this drive-thru was a modern fever dream: head-sets, automatic windows, flashing timers, caching-ing touch-screen registers. Like a good New Englander, I remembered when this new building had been built: an unidentified point in my childhood that, if brought up for family conversation, could be narrowed and named. Before or after Star Market turned into Shaw's? Before or after the fire station burned? Was remodeled? I could not name the relative date, but someone could. Like a bad New Englander, I also could not name what was in this location before the new Dunkin' Donuts entered our collective memory. An old Dunkin' Donuts, perhaps? It seems too easy.
My Dunkin' Donuts was on the fringe of Main Street, a few blocks down from the seafood restaurants and tourist shops hung with glittering sand dollars and signs reading Life is better at the beach and Home is where the sand is. At the opposite end of Main Street was the triangular Village Green, and if you followed either of its forks for less than a mile, you would pass a different Dunkin' Donuts, both half the size of mine, both connected to other stores: a gas station, a convenience store. My Dunkin' Donuts was free-standing, independent, central.
II.
If you've ever had a Dunkin's donut, or breakfast sandwich, or coffee, you know what I mean when I say they aren't special. They aren't exclusive. But they aren't bad. In fact, they often hit just exactly the right spot: sweet, savory, bitter, squarely what you ordered.
When I worked at Dunkin', we were supposed to pour out and re-brew coffee that had been sitting around for too long, intensifying on the burner. There was a white wax pencil to mark the glass pots with the time they would expire. Eight minutes after brewing? Maybe eighteen? Whatever it was, we did it only when the manager was watching.
The first summer I worked at Dunkin', they sold pizzas. Frozen, we slid them into the TurboChef oven, pushed whatever combination of buttons our training required, then removed, sliced, and boxed them. Let me be clear: the pizzas were for one small person to eat as a snack. They were sliced in quarters, not sixths or eighths. They went in a box I could hold in one hand. They were very hot and not very popular, mainly due to their shock value. Everyone was curious, few were willing to pivot from the coffee-adjacent snack they had planned to an untested pizza, even if it looked good on the posters.
This is what I enjoy about Dunkin' Donuts: it is a place with no affectations, no veneer of authenticity. Or rather, for those of us who grew up with Dunkin', this lack of polish is the proof inside the donut's pudding filling: Dunkin' is where you go for something brightly colored and novel, sugary and a served in a wax-paper sleeve. It will never try to be straight out of Paris or Seattle, or Santa Monica. It is straight outah Boston, and we don't like pretense.
After my second summer at Dunkin', I went to college, where I quickly learned some people—Midwestern, Northwestern, maybe Southern People—looked down on Dunkin' Donuts as a parochial, second-class coffee den of iniquity. Bad coffee, unhealthy snacks. People went to Caribou Coffee or Starbucks for coffee in all its cold brewed, single-origin glory. People ordered drinks with complex flavors, multiple textures, expected different roasts, not just varying amounts of cream and sweetener. In short: they did not drink coffee. Not in its natural form, as God intended it to be drunk. They were often shocked to learn I drank coffee black, for the bracing bitterness, as I had since I was 13, and that I had no opposition to Dunkin' Donuts. That's how I put it: no opposition. I was offended by their ill-informed judgments. What did they, who didn't drink it, know about coffee? About what a Dunkin' could be? Nothing. But I keep my offenses close to the heart.
III.
Today, wading into our 30s, my sister and I play a game where we exchange photos of Dunkin' Donuts ads for seasonal specialties. Both she and I are recently returned to Massachusetts; both of us jarred by the present, imposing itself over our past. Today, we live on opposite edges of Boston, deep in the heart of Dunkin' Land. In February, she sends a crooked shot of a poster for the Cocoa-Mocha Iced Signature Latte, flanked by two heart-shaped donuts: one pink frosted with vanilla filling, the other chocolate with "brownie batter" inside. We know they're lying—brownie batter is not food safe—but we accept this description of the filling as Plato does imperfect forms: it is a shadow, a diluted version of a perfect thing. The filling is like brownie batter.
By April, the special is an "egg-shaped" donut carrying a yellow Peep on a bed of green sprinkles, and marshmallow flavored coffee. In October, the Peep is swapped out for a chocolate munchkin sitting on top of an orange-frosted donut, black legs iced on to make a clinging spidey. Soon, it's a Holiday Brownie Crumble Donut, vanilla frosted with brownie crumbles and dark green icing zig-zags. On billboards—and there are many Dunkin' billboards in the web of Boston—this brown, white, and green looks like a plaid couch our parents finally got rid of in the 90s. On it, we tried to watch Saturday morning cartoons with all their saturated, child-centric commercials: A red, hulking pitcher of Kool-Aid with a deep voice hangs out with children in a pool; a boy's head flies through the ceiling when he tries a sour candy; a toucan follows his unidentifiable nose to sugar cereal; a tiny dog announces his desire for tacos. To try to make sense of these things is to miss the point, to scare the improbability away.
My sister and I know that not even in the highest, most ideal, most perfect form of our world, is there any such thing as marshmallow-flavored coffee. There is no way. There is no need. We don't want to try it. We just want to see it and marvel at the tastes of our neighbors, the audacity of someone, something we used to know.
IV.
When I worked at Dunkin', everyone wore visors. It was the aughties, and visors were not cool, not like they had been in Clueless, not like they were when my sister bought one at Old Navy and wore it around Vienna. At Dunkin', it was required we wore a "head covering," and, on my first day when my manager asked my preference—Visor or baseball cap?—I looked around at all my future co-workers sporting beige visors. "Visor," I told her, and she reached inside her desk and threw one at me. I didn't catch it. I don't catch.
I was viscerally ashamed of that visor. I did not put it on until I was inside the building, and I shucked it from my head before stepping outside at the end of my shift. If someone I knew but was not bound to by blood entered the store, I did my best to hide—at a different register, in the drive-thru, behind the TurboChef oven—until a coworker stepped up to take my acquaintance's order. I hoped that inside of the orange polo and the khaki pants and beneath the visor, I was unrecognizable. But there was no guarantee. We were also required to label and individualize ourselves with nametags.
When our managers were away, some of my co-workers took their "head coverings" off. I was never so bold. I did not want to be noticed. I did not want to take the risk of getting yelled at by a manager who yelled at employees in a way I had never been yelled at in my life.
I wonder how many of my co-workers chose visors for the same, cowardly reason I did, or took them off for the same reasons I didn't. To be seen and not seen. To be bold in our hiding.
V.
Along with seasonal menu options doomed to be one-season wonders—avocado toast, tomato pesto grilled cheese, cornbread donut, pizza—Dunkin' Donuts has embarked on a series of brand crossovers. As with TV shows and superhero franchises, a crossover is a space where two things, two peoples or products from different universes, meet and co-produce. The time is limited, the results mixed, the hype incredible.
For example, in the fall, in Massachusetts, Harpoon Brewery sells a mixed pack of Dunkin' flavored beers, all aggressively branded: Harpoon Dunkin' Pumpkin Spiced Latte Ale, Harpoon Dunkin' Blueberry Matcha IPA, Harpoon Dunkin' Maple Crème Blonde Ale, and Harpoon Dunkin' Midnight American Porter. The first time I saw these, back in Massachusetts after many years of early adulthood elsewhere, my jaw fell off my face. I told people who I thought should know, people who lived in Boston or at least New England. They knew. All of this has happened before, they told me. I had been gone too long, my inconsistency showing.
But my eyes were opened: my former employer was in nearly every aisle of the grocery store. There were the predictable branded coffee creamers and bottled drinks that, while not new, did not exist the last time I had lived in Massachusetts. More recent was the collaboration with Post Cereals: "macchiato" and "mocha" puffs mixed with dry, hard marshmallows to simulate cream. "Brewed with real Dunkin' coffee" they read, just in case we missed that from the pink and orange boxes, from the oversized DUNKIN' across the top of the box and inserted into every flavor description. And the snacks! given a tip-off, I scanned the aisles for a paper pack of goldfish in the wrong color. Dunkin' Pumpkin Spice Goldfish. Is it a wonder? A horror?
Eve's error was believing the knowledge of good and evil would not hurt her. I have given you the good. Here is the evil: these Dunkin' collaborations aren't just food. Food, I understand. Food is what Dunkin' does. It's in the name. Food or drink crossovers can be laudable, if shameless, extensions of the titillating, in-store seasonal delights. But even shamelessness should have a limit.
A few months after my Harpoon x Dunkin' discovery, I was riding the T, Boston's doomed public transit, to work when I saw them: A man's feet in white-toed Saucony sneakers, but the white brightened into rows of pink and orange DDs. They marched down the length of his arches, convened above his heels in a pink and orange swoosh. Off the train, I called and raved to my sister, the only person still interested in my discoveries: You'll never guess what I saw! Yeah, Dunkin' sneakers! Naïve, we decided it must be a novelty order, a custom purchase from a devoted fan. It's hard to explain what Dunkin' means to the people of Massachusetts. Let's just say the Boston Globe, which often publishes breathless reporting on the upcoming seasonal offerings at Dunkin', has called the brand "the wind beneath our regional wings." Still, my sister and I were wrong about the "custom" sneakers. In the ads, the sneaker is being dipped into rainbow sprinkles, reminding us to eat our post-run donuts. In the ads, someone has taken a bite out of a sneaker to reveal its donut-y core. In the ads, a sneaker is rising out of a box of munchkins. In the ads, a pair of sneakers is sitting on a branded sheet of wax paper, the same sheet I once used to pull donuts out of the case as the customers pointed. America runs on Dunkin'.
Recently, Dunkin' Donuts also did a collaboration with e.l.f. cosmetics: Donut Forget Putty Primer, coffee lip scrub, a strawberry donut facial sponge, Dunkin' Dozen eye shadow palette, everything always in pink and orange, boxed and bagged like a donut. The ads: "Get it While it's Hot."
These are examples, not exhaustive. There is or were Dunkin' Donuts branded candles, interior wall paint, a spikeball set, sunglasses. Still, this list is not exhaustive. What is spikeball? That's a rhetorical question. Don't explain it. I don't care.
VI.
When I worked at Dunkin' Donuts, we sold bags of coffee, coffee mugs, iced coffee cups, key chains, and coozies. I learned the word "coozie" at Dunkin' Donuts. Today, on the company's own website, you can buy hoodies and t-shirts and laptop cases and customizable hats and bowties and ring-bearer pillows for your wedding. This list is not exhaustive. It's a little worrying, a little sad. We must have had a website back in aughties, but I never visited it, never thought anything about it. Why does a donut shop need a website?
What is a Dunkin' if you don't have to set foot inside, or, at minimum, open your car window to the onslaught of its garish, ordinary existence? The sizzling of an empty coffee pot on a hot burner, the crunchy, sticky sugar of glaze, the snap of the TurboChef oven pulling itself shut, the haze of a manager railing in the distance.
What is a food shop that sells loungewear online? What is anything if you buy it without knowing what it feels like, what it smells like, what you feel like with it? Don't we purchase non-essentials because of how they make us feel about the world?
This is the delight-turned-shame of Dunkin' Donuts: It will put the pink and orange DD on anything it can get its sugar-sticky hands on. It will cannibalize any trend and re-produce it, five years later, without any desire to pretend their avocado toast is a healthy snack or their donut-with-peep-on-top is anything but a shocking publicity ploy. And again, I appreciate this about a brand, this lack of pretense.
But there is a point between a willful lack of shame and exploitive self-consciousness where the joy disappears, the paths between worlds dissolve.
VII.
Dunkin', you know, was sold. Several times, beginning with its acquisition by Allied-Lyons, a British-based food conglomerate, in 1990. But when I worked there, and up until a few years ago, it was still perceived as a Massachusetts brand. The first Dunkin' Donuts is still open just south of Boston, in Quincy. Also born in Quincy was John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams. Two presidents, and our beloved Dunkin'.
But it isn't really our Dunkin' anymore. Since 2020, it's Inspire Brands' Dunkin'. Their headquarters are in Georgia. Also theirs are Arby's and Buffalo Wild Wings and Sonic and Jimmy John's. None of those restaurants existed, or currently exist, in my hometown.
Once, when I was a teenager, my cousin from Texas told us about Sonic. The workers wear roller-skates. They roller-skate your order to your table or car, she explained. We could accept curly fries, but this was too far. This was farce, right? This was a musical, way off Broadway.
I understand the sale of Dunkin' Donuts was business, and that maybe this capital group, this private equity firm, could know something about how to run a brand that someone in Quincy, Massachusetts, might not know. But I don't understand how they could know anything about what a Dunkin' is, what a donut should be, what the Massachusetts heartland expects of its children.
VIII.
Before this big sale, perhaps in preparation for this sale, perhaps to make itself seem something more than it was, Dunkin' Donuts legally changed its name to "Dunkin'." They posted signs: Just Call Us Dunkin' and Our Friends Call Us Dunkin', and we all felt a little uncomfortable. Of course, everyone I know has called Dunkin' Donuts Dunkin' for as long as there have been donuts to dunk, regardless of whether we prefer to dunk our donuts or eat them un-mushed. But this legal, re-introductory name change felt a bit like someone else's college buddy introducing themselves to you as Farts McGee, a nickname you had to be there for, 20 years ago, to understand. It's jumping a social gun. It's trying too hard. It's not charming; it's awkward business.
And what about all the old friends of Farts McGee, the ones who were there, 20 years ago, when he earned this name? The ones who know exactly what happened that night, the ones who still laugh to tears when they tell the story of McGee and his farts. Are they just like everyone else now? Doesn't Farts McGee see that, in his desire to make himself friendly, unique, personable with everyone, he's erasing a specific history with specific people, who don't care about everyone? To be friends with everyone is to be, at the end of the day, special to no one. Farts McGee is not a nickname if it's just your name.
If this was a children's book, by the end of the day, Farts McGee would realize his mistake and make things right.
IX.
My Dunkin' Donuts had a night crew. Our central location stayed open until 3:00 AM, re-opened at 5:30 AM. The night shift was two ladies, a sort of Laurel and Hardy duo: one tall with stringy, blonde-dyed hair and bad teeth, the other short, buxom, and a side-seller of sex toys. She always asked if I had a boyfriend, if I wanted to spice things up. I didn't.
These two came in before their shift started at 8:00 PM and shut the systems down. They unplugged the timer on the drive-thru, switched off half the coffee pots, pulled paper cups out of their tracks and stacked them in illegal areas, re-arranged all the carefully ordered donut racks. We have our own system, they told us as we yanked off our visors and slid out the door. During the day, their behavior would have been scandalous. Visor-clad workers would have been yelled at for breaking so many rules, disregarding so many corporate systems.
But it was the night shift. No one was there to see. See no evil, know no evil.
Except I saw. We all saw what they did to our store. That's what I'm saying. Everyone knew what had happened.
X.
When I grew up in a coastal Massachusetts town with five Dunkin' Donuts, we counted on donuts to mark the seasons. I can't remember my family ever buying donuts, but, still, they were ubiquitous—at church, at Marching Band practice when the director had bad news to give us, at my friends' houses on Saturday mornings, at any volunteer event you've never heard of: flat pink and orange boxes of a mixed dozen donuts, some with glaze, some with coconut no one asked for, some with colored frosting and seasonal sprinkles. Unlike today, only the color, not the shape of the sprinkles changed. Pink and white in February; red, white, and blue in July; orange and brown in the fall; red and green at Christmas. It was how we knew where we were in the world, when we were in the world.
XI.
I don't want to expect too much of a brand. I don't want to expect anything of a brand. Haven't we agreed that, in a capitalist society, expecting companies to care for anything but profit is unreasonable? Even if we don't say it, this is the way our laws are structured.
It's clear my Dunkin' Donuts is a thing of the past. Its brightest star is no longer Saturday morning mixed dozens with sprinkles. It's got bigger goals than local delight. It's looking to expand, to have an online presence, to get TikTok-ers and teens with Internet fans to buy Dunkin' branded hats and make-up and onesies; to get millennials to decorate their long-awaited houses with trademark coffee shop colors; to get lovers to carry Dunkin' up to the altar along with golden matrimonial promises and symbols. It's looking for runners to prove the brand slogan, to run, run, run on Dunkin' sneaks.
I realize there is room for irony—if that's still a thing today—and enjoyable absurdity in this, but still, I wonder: when is enough enough? I go home to be a body, a being, at rest from a world constantly trying to sell me things, telling me who I could be if I bought the things it's selling, who I could be if I made more of what I am. I don't want my home, my private life, to be filled with the symbols of corporate entities. This is, in fact, exactly what a private life is not supposed to shelter, even when the brands have nostalgic meaning. I'm a person, not a place of commerce.
What is a coffee shop when it's a collaboration with every aesthetic product you can think of? What does it mean when our fast-food companies want us to paint our houses to match their marketing strategy? Paint our faces to look like glazed donuts? Cover our bodies with their logos? Why isn't it enough for a shop to sell donuts and coffee, novelty pizzas and seasonal wonders? I don't know anyone who wants more. In my few years as a Dunkin' employee, no one even really wanted the pizzas.
Is there any point to all these collaborations besides expansion, money? Haven't we learned our lessons about colonialism and evangelization and capitalism and exponential growth? All things end. The universe might be expanding, but it has limits, is limited. What is so bad about being essentially the same person, the same place, the same shop, you were when you stared out? Isn't that hard enough? To survive without becoming less?
XII.
Today, in Boston, I live within walking distance of a Dunkin' Donuts. It has recently added a walk-up window, and I find this delightful. I can take myself there, and take myself away from there, without ever entering a car.
When I take myself to the Dunkin', I marvel at the specials. Sometimes, I send my sister a photo of the poster of these specials so I know someone else is seeing what I'm seeing.
Regardless of what's special, I order a black coffee or an iced coffee with cream and a glazed donut. I'm never disappointed with this order. I'm always thrilled by how, when I take a bite of my donut, the glaze cracks around the soft pastry. How both the donut and its glaze dissolve into my mouth with barely an effort. How certain I feel that this donut—its texture, its simplicity—is proof of another type of existence. I know this donut is magic because, just before the last bite of its halo disappears into me, the world shivers. Here is something simple and finite and good. I do not let myself think any further. I am tired of trying to think further.
I want joy, not riches. I want to be treated like a thing that breathes, not a thing that buys. Is that so much to ask? Why is it so hard to say?
