What Exactly are you Dunkin Donuts?

Guest post written by my brother, Tim Nesdale

Dunkin Donuts has arrived in New Zealand but very recently, my home in Hamilton.  My wife asked me to dunk down (see what I did there?) on my lunch break and go get a menu so that she can browse all of their delicious treats.  Prior to doing this, I did the smart thing all Kiwi’s do and typed www.dunkindonuts.co.nz into the browser on my phone.

Fail!

The site uses Flash.  Clearly their web team hasn’t caught up with the rest of the world yet and realised that most smart phones can’t play flash in their web browsers and that more than half of web traffic in the world is via mobile devices.

So I tried dunkindonuts.com – Great it’s not flash so I can ACTUALLY USE IT!  Unfortunately that was the only highlight of this entire experience. Now surely, being a global multinational company I’ll be able to get a menu with at least their flagship best selling products right?

Fail!

The first two items in the navigation menu are ‘Coffee’ followed by ‘Menu’.  So I click ‘Menu’.  Then I’m presented with…. their ‘Drinks’ menu. I’m seriously not kidding you here. Coffee, Coolatta, Espresso, this is all wonderful but I’m looking for DONUTS!  Have I come to the right place?  You guys sell Donuts right?  Oh look, the tab NEXT to ‘Drinks’ is ‘Food’.  NOW we are getting somewhere, should be plain sailing now right?

Wrong again.

Apparently they sell Bagel Twists, Bagels, Big N’ Toasted, Breakfast Sandwiches, Cookies, Danishes…. oh and Donuts.  That’s right people.  “Donuts” is not first, not second, not even third, but SEVENTH on the list of food items that took me 3 clicks to get to!  Right, so I’m on the Donuts page FINALLY.  Now Dunkin Donuts, show me glossy delicious photos of all of your tasty treats!

FAIL!

I’m presented with a drop down list of Donut names.  Can I just see a page where I can browse at least SOME of your Donuts?  Maybe just your top six in the world?  Your top 3? Maybe just the Big Mac or the Whopper of Dunkin Donuts?  No?  Okay then… I scan the drop down list of Donuts, and pick out one I like, “Bowtie Donut”, I wonder what THAT is, sounds interesting let’s check it out!

FAIL!

Was I expecting too much?  A nice little photo, some marketing spiel to entice me to buy this donut?  Maybe a short list of key ingredients? What I get is a table giving me the nutritional facts of the Donut. I’m buying Donuts! CLEARLY I DON’T CARE ABOUT HOW FAT THEY’LL MAKE ME!  Did I click on ‘Salads’?  The ingredients list is there but it begins: “Donut dough: Donut mix, Enriched flour, wheat, flour, malted barley flour, Niacin iron, Thiamin…..” okay I’m bored already!  Does it have caramel sauce? Does it have sprinkles?  Does it have crispy biscuit pieces?!!! Who knows, I’m not going to find out here.

So after wasting my precious 3 minutes I decide, stuff this, I’ll just walk down to the physical store and get a menu!

So I walk down to the store and walk in to see a dozen confused and despairing individuals who can’t make out the confusing ‘combo’ deals or understand which donuts qualify as ‘premium’ or ‘regular’.  I try to bypass the chaos of confusion and go straight to the counter and ask for a menu that I can take home with me.  “Sorry Sir, we don’t have menus”.

I don’t even have the energy to tell you that they failed that test.  This is just not funny anymore.  Maybe I could take a photo of the menu board?  Nope can’t do that either.  The Menu board has prices for different types of donuts or combinations of them but no actual donut names.  I glance at the half empty cabinet and see 4 different types of donuts, none of which look remotely appealing.

So to summarise.

The top 10 reasons why Dunkin Donuts sucks!:

1. The logo for Dunkin Donuts is not a donut, it’s a cup of coffee! What?!
2. The NZ site unnecessarily uses Flash so most of us can’t view it on our Smart Phones
3. It takes me 3 clicks on their international website to see an actual Donut name they sell.
4. I can’t browse any Donuts not even their top 3 or their ‘Flagship’ Donut
5. There are images of Donuts on the site but no link at all between images and actual Donut names
6. There are no descriptions of what is in any of their Donuts (unless you really want to know which Donuts have Niacin in them)
7. They have no take home menus in their physical stores
8. Their ‘Combo’s are hard to understand
9. Sometimes they only have a few types of Donuts available to sell
10. They cannot be found in the NZ business directory “Yellow” nor can they be found in Google Places, lucky they’re bright pink and big in America or no one here would even know they existed.