Friday, February 05, 2010

Krispy Kreme Klosed


At 1440 Boston Post Road in Milford, the red-glazed neon once signaling freshly-made glazed donuts right off the conveyor belt lights no more.

Driving up and down the ever-bustling US-1, Boston Post Road in Milford, many will now have to chose Starbucks or perhaps for their donut fix, the newly-built Dunkin' Donuts across from the juggernaut Connecticut Post Mall. Once a beacon to one's afternoon sugar attack, the state's final free-standing Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (not "Donuts!") has finally closed.

Yes, finally. And quite frankly, I'm surprised its taken this long.

If the 1-800-Junk truck didn't scare customers away for the past year and a half, the wild sugary values and aggressive critics found in Krispy Kreme's delicious glazed doughnuts might have. Or perhaps it was the grizzly murder locals remember taking place here when it was KFC back in 1999...


Slowly dwindling from the Milford store included merchandise, a play area for kids, specialty drinks and other menu items to even plastic cups for iced beverages, Krispy Kreme tightened its belt with a firm squeeze over the last couple years of its life enough to splatter the jelly all over the walls. On a typical afternoon, one would be eerily greeted by a hollow presence in the store's lobby. Yeah, don't scare the staffers...

The location which opened to much, much fanfare in 2002 along with sister shop in Newington closed quietly in late 2009 though the Caldor Rainbow has discovered this upon passing in late January (yes, where have we been...). Forthcoming "drive-in" service restaurant (that's correct, no dining room!), Sonic is been among the rumored to open in its place -- as well as make for the first site in Connecticut. We'll surely expect blistery Winters and limited warmth in the fertile months are among the culprits for Sonic's future troubles in the Northeast and not high-caloric and sugar scares which were those largely (pardon the pun) responsible for Krispy Kreme's league of disappearing acts.

Krispy Kreme, who has closed up many stores over the last few years has no more than a handful of remaining locations along the eastern seaboard including a lone surviving Connecticut location inside Mohegan Sun Casino.

Another shop on The Berlin Turnpike closed in early 2006, caused once, albeit short-lived crippling traffic concerns along the mighty 5/15 stretch in Newington. Today, the troubled blue-accented site sits vacant after being used briefly by a since-vacated, widely-shuttered Citibank branch.

Once a treat for being on this end of the state is no more. My last trip here was in early October and even though I regularly patronized the typically ghost-town Milford Krispy Kreme for many years now, the closure is deeply saddening.

Here's some of our archival photos to remember the tale of Krispy Kreme in Milford and its brief stint in the Northeast.







View more of our photos of Krispy Kreme and more on Flickr.

O
n an editorial note, I deeply apologize for the lack of maintenance and atrocious levels of spam that have collected on pages at The Caldor Rainbow over many months of our inactivity. I'm working to delete what I can since Blogger hasn't any simple, bulk deletion or effective captcha against such terrorists. Some pages' comments sections have been overrun and, in some instances, hijacked by surmountable levels of Japanese spammers.

9 comments:

Livemalls said...

We have the opposite problem here. Krispy Kreme seems to be relatively stable, while Dunkin' Donuts tends to constantly open and close stores.

Unknown said...

Bye bye Krispy Kreme. I enjoyed it while it lasted. I think the one in the casino will stay. It seems to have enough traffic, especially with all the gamblers using their meager club points to stop in and get a snack on their way home.

Anonymous said...

Good to see you back buddy. Sorry to hear that KK has shut its doors, so much better than Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks.
Hey, on a (somewhat) related note, did you happen to notice that 99 Restaurant (Newington, on Berlin Turnipike) has shuttered its doors? Happened around the first of February and signage is all gone....

Mela said...

I'm not sure if we have Krispy Kreme here anymore in the Philadelphia/South New Jersey area. They pulled out of their partnership with Acme after a couple of years (it didn't help that they only gave the stores one doughnut delivery a day, so whatever wasn't sold by noon spent the rest of the day going stale). And the big-deal free-standing store (the only one in the area) is probably on the least accessible area of the Roosevelt Boulevard. I haven't been past it in a long time, but I doubt it's still around. Like your empty KK here, they made a huge deal out of its opening on all the local news shows, but now it's pretty much forgotten.

Their stuff's good, but they just went expansion-happy in really dumb ways.

Heather Green said...

I remember the intense fanfare that the Newington one opened to.

Personally, if they are going to replace it with a Sonic, I would be thrilled. My parents defected from CT to South Carolina 2 years ago, so when I went to go visit them in 2008 I got to finally experience the wonder that is Sonic after having been taunted by their ads for the better part of my 19 years.

I stumbled across your blog today while googling the old Waterbury mall and I spent a good portion of time reading your posts, I particularly enjoyed the ones about the Danbury mall. To this day I am beyond annoyed that they took out the giant fountain from my youth and replaced it with that lame little thing. I think they could have reworked the big one to fit in with the remodel. I however, do not miss that terrible brown and green color scheme.

Do you remember the various Looney Tunes characters they used to have hanging around there? Do you know if those figurines were there up until the remodel or were they gone sometime before that?

Keep up the good work :)

Megan McGory Gleason said...

I remember when the Milford Krispy Kreme opened, they sent 80 dozen donuts to our campus bar at Fairfield U for a concert we had. By the end of the concert 55 dozen ended up getting sent to a party, and that was after we were trying to give 3 dozen a person to anyone who had an interest at the bar! I have a picture somewhere of that hot mess...

Minnesota Stores said...

Wow talk about a flash in the pan. When our Krispy Kreme opened they had to have police direct traffic for months and the line was long long long. Within two years they were closed for good.

Anonymous said...

When all else is lost the future still remains.

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