Dunkin’ out for the territory: in search of a Boston icon
On a recent trip to Boston, I was looking as usual to find some good, permanent momento of the place and trip, and one angle I really tried was to find some kind of cool Dunkin’ Donuts related object. Yes, humble, mighty Dunkin’: as a visitor from the West Coast, from which Dunkin has now largely, kind of sadly, retreated, I view Dunkin’ as a distinct Boston icon, from the city on a hill; loud and proud, pink+orange contrast to the Pacific Northwest’s tasteful all-devouring green mermaid-goliath ghoul brand. Founded by Boston (Dorchester)-born William Rosenberg in nearby Quincy in 1950, now headquartered in suburban Canton, world-bestriding with over 12,000 branches globally, today with better brand sentiment than and faster expanding in the US vs the retrenching Starbucks [see Swan 2018] — America runs on Dunkin’.
above, historic Dunkin’ branch at the heart of historic Lower Mills, in Dorchester/Milton, at Dorchester Ave and Washington St. Clearly the bright spot and hub of the village! Lower Mills Dunkin’, I drank of you, a large iced coffee, while exploring this area. One of the earliest industrial works in the American colonies, since 1634!
I hoped to find such local pride around Dunkin’, among my hosts and locals or people met, but no, I found mostly eye-roll or indifference or incomprehension. My Boston people do not appear to be Dunkin’ people. Come to think of it my people, period, do not appear to be Dunkin’ people, nor do I even have ‘people,’ particularly. But anyway, I try, and I was on a quest to find Boston authentic, hallmarks of its global influence and distinction; hopefully crystallized into some durable, distinctive object; surely there’d be some kind of chic DD bottle-opener, mug, or part-ironic part-proud local artisanal DD goods? Doesn’t every place do that, like Portland?
Below are some of the better things, in that vein, I found online. Usually I’m looking for subtle, minimal, timeless… perhaps this is mission implausible when it comes to Dunkin’. Those tastefully teal and rust-colored Dunkin’ mugs at right, for example, somehow they just scream Off Brand, utterly lacking in brand confidence and thus, ironically, taste.
This is really a spiritual matter for me, in that I don’t even particularly care for Dunkin’s food or coffee, or way of serving it, or decor, and don’t even generally eat donuts. What I do like is coffee+food-serving places widely, available at industrial-scale and open late, preferably 24 hours (thank you, life-saving 24-hour Dunkin’ at Logan airport on this trip, oasis of the flight-cancelled!).
Also, I do like Dunkin’s distinct visual and cultural brand; the sharp contrast with the class-aspirational Europhilia of Starbucks and (my personal favorite, new import to Boston area, London-based) Caffè Nero. The tabula rasa quality of Dunkin’s traditional all-plastic Everyman playpen interiors — which like Denny’s, are such reliable and democratically charmless meeting places of all against all, all across America and worldwide. That formica everywhere, it says democracy; it says, impervious; like, we view all people equally, as a potential spill.
below: a new Caffè Nero branch I visited in Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood, for contrast. All artisan & industrial materials; zero plastic in sight. Here, I was with my people, I have to admit; I took a lovely 1.5 hour recharge, drinking in the material/cultural ambience like a vampire to blood or Popeye to spinach.
[Tabula rasa, appropriately, refers not literally to “blank slate” but to the erasable wax tablets or tabula used by Romans. Slate by contrast is a very Starbucks, auuuthentic, fancy-people sort of material, the type of thing contractors and interior designers slap on a property to price it up].
Cultural Politics of Dunkin’
It’s been fascinating to watch for years the Dunkin’ brand’s cultural politics of positioning against (but partly embracing) the upmarket, new-money culture and snobbery; the “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading” people (as the 2006 Club For Growth anti-Howard Dean ad put it); and Dunkin’s contrariwise articulation (appropriation?) of working-class, egalitarian themes.
You could say Dunkin’ has always been oriented to coffee/food as a sort of industrial-scale service — serving native needs rather than acquired wants or aspirations. Founder William Rosenberg left school by eighth grade to support his family, who had lost their store in the Great Depression. Afterwards,
“at age 14, he went to work for Western Union as a full-time telegram delivery boy. At seventeen, he started working for Simco, a company that distributed ice cream from refrigerated trucks, rising from delivery boy to national sales manager at age twenty-one, supervising the production, shipping, cold storage and manufacturing and managing 40 to 100 trucks. At the start of WWII he joined the Bethlehem Steel Company. He would later become the first Jewish trade union delegate.” [Wikipedia, “William Rosenberg”].
Informed by these experiences of large-scale industry, Rosenberg in 1946 founded Industrial Luncheon Service to serve Boston-area wartime factory workers via trucks, vans, and mobile carts.
By comparison, Starbuck’s origin story is distinctly artisan- and culture-oriented:
The first Starbucks opened in Seattle, Washington, on March 31, 1971, by three partners who met while they were students at the University of San Francisco: English teacher Jerry Baldwin, history teacher Zev Siegl, and writer Gordon Bowker were inspired to sell high-quality coffee beans and equipment by [Berkeley-based] coffee roasting entrepreneur Alfred Peet after he taught them his style of roasting beans.
An instructive contrast to “Industrial Luncheon Service,” the brand name ‘Starbucks’ was, the founders recount, a fairly arbitrary adaption of a character name from that well-regarded by rarely-read classic Moby Dick, chosen mainly for the sound. [Pendergast 1999].
Dunkin’ founder Rosenberg also helped organize the franchise-brands industry, which began expanding rapidly after WWII, by co-founding the International Franchise Association in 1960. This began as a meeting between a small group of entrepreneurs to discuss the state of franchising, brought to a point by Rosenberg’s characteristically can-do attitude:
“The discussion between the entrepreneurs came to an abrupt halt as Dunkin’ Donuts Founder Bill Rosenberg slammed a $100 on the table and demanded they needed to start an association to deal with political and legislative matters. It was then and there the IFA and the Convention was born.” [Zois 2016].
While ‘franchising’ may strike many as a characteristic of post-War mass-production and uniformity —culturally-disdained plastique — on the other hand it is a form of decentralization and local value-sharing. Starbucks, by comparison, has maintainly a staunch and unusual opposition to franchising:
“We don’t franchise our stores,” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said. “So much of what we’ve succeeded in is based on the values and culture of the company, and I never believed we could do that in the franchise system where the people weren’t working for the company.” [Taylor 2016].
In his 1997 book Pour Your Heart Into It, Schultz described why he’s opposed to franchising, admitting he wants to maintain a “fanatical” level of control over his stores.
Strict centralization with ‘fanatical’ control is really the opposite of artisanship, and, you might say, culture. At least, the ‘culture’ you imbibe at Starbuck is one presented complete for your consumption, not one that you help create; that is, it’s largely industrialized and mass-produced, arguably more so than the tabula rasa, Everyman culture of Dunkin’. Your role is to get a product or a wage, not a share in creating it or of the profits.
In terms of American cultural ideas, you might say Starbucks falls on the side of what Huckleberry Finn calls ‘sivilizing’ influences, which Huck decides when embarking on adventure at the book’s outset and again at the end, he’s better off without. The true ‘territory’ to light out for is the interior, new America of self-creation, not the old & coastal country of rules and taste. [Also, the culture which Mark Twain ironically depicts Huck regarding as civilization and morality, is slave-holding society, which Huck violates in order to set former slave Jim and himself free]. It’s where we’ve been already and from which we need to go.
But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.
Dunkin’ feels your pain about the foreign(ism)s: the ‘Fritalia’ commercial (2006):
In more recent times, fiercely competing with Starbucks particularly, Dunkin’ has often taken a explicit cultural-politics, perhaps nativist-progressive angle.
For example, in the classic “Fritalia” commercial (by Hill Holliday agency for Dunkin’ Donuts, 2006), a multicultural cast of Everyman morning coffee-orderers is shown lined up, bleary and befuddled, before a faux-European cafe’s comically detailed and slyly absurd list of faux-European-named coffee drinks:
The customers singly, then in unison, break into a lament song (one of 14 songs by cult band They Might Be Giants, whose founding members are from Boston area, written for or used in the “America Runs on Dunkin’” rebanding campaign):
“Ocho, half cap, latte-chino,
mocha duay, avet muah.
My mouth can’t, form these words.
My mind can’t, find these words.
Is it French, or is it Italian?
[barista, turning to camera]:
“Perhaps Fritalian?”
Cut to man walking past outside, enjoying a Dunkin’ latte.
Voiceover:
“The delicious latte is from Dunkin’ Donuts. You order them in English, not Fritalian.
America runs on Dunkin’.”
But the Dunkin’ mission goes deeper still than just, right speaking. Dunkin’, unlike some enterprises of fancified “third-place” self-indulgence and idleness, is about doing stuff. You know, keeping America running, the pipes working and the cars fixed so our precious, self-appointed cultural elite can shuttle about and look down on us. We’re the people who know which way to turn a wrench, because the idle and ruinous leisure class never has and never will. And sail on our great ship of state never will, if left in the soft-skinned hands of those traitors.
So, anyway, proclaims another classic 2006 Dunkin’ ad, “Lefty loosy, Righty tighty,” featuring song by and cameos by members of They Might Be Giants:
“Lefty loosy/ Righty tighty/
Wrench in one hand / Feeling mighty..”tagline: “Get stuff done with freshly ground, freshly brewed Dunkin Donuts coffee.”
Ok the ridiculous oversize wrench is kind of clowning it up, over the top, but that executive lady in grey pants-suit, changing her own flat tire on the roadside, no sweat, with a little help from team orange-and-pink .. rock ON! Let’s DO this!
The Dunkin’ envisioned way of life, furthermore, is both deep and humble. It believes we together have the know-how, are on the right path, without having to talk in foreign terms. We don’t need a new “third place,” because we know our place, the right place for things and where things stand, and things is a perfectly ok term for what we want and are doing. Great things, in fact all things, can be achieved by just steadily doing a bit better what needs to be done [like in the old days pre-1970s, when worker productivity gains were actually shared with the workers, rather than taken by the capitalists like private-equity firm Bain Capital that now own Dunkin’]. Just a bit more productivity and efficiency, thanks to Dunkin’, will get us there.
So, anyway, says the 2006 commerical and TMBG song, “Things Are What I Like To Do” (preach!):
Things are what I like to do
Doing things is what I like to do
Things are what I like to do
No twiddling of thumbs I get everything doneI’m slightly more productive now than previous because
I’m slightly more efficient than I previously wasDoing things is what I like to do, YES!
Doing things is what I like to do, YES!
Tagline:
“Dunkin Donuts. It’s how everyday people get things done every day.”
Ok that’s the Dunkin’, workingman, “doing” theme in its branding. But is the actual Dunkin’ operation really disdaining the new fancy-pants leisure-class gourmandizing artisanal trends? Not… exactly. Not if, oh fallen world, that’s where the money is.. the new money, the market share.
So, introducing! literally this past week, Dunkin’ partnership with Boston craft-brew pioneer Harpoon Brewing, for a limited edition Harpoon/Dunkin’ Coffee Porter!
The Harpoon Dunkin’ Coffee Porter cross-promotion / joint brew has a real spot-on, workingman-solidarity backstory, one could weep; (and note the sly heavy-drinker joke about beer for breakfast):
“Dunkin’ has been there for us since the early days when getting the brewery up and running required a lot of beer, and even more coffee,” Dan Kenary, the CEO and co-founder of Harpoon, said in a press release. “We couldn’t think of a better way to pay tribute to the company that’s helped fuel our success than to create something special for our fans by combining the taste of their favorite morning brew with one of ours.”
Man, do they have my number! I actually bought a six-pack of Harpoon beer while on my recent trip, because it was the most local Boston thing I could find to stock the room with. In fact, the oddly tasteful and well-considered incongruity of the Harpoon Dunkin’ Coffee Porter bottles/labels (Limited Edition!) make them just the type of tasteful designy trip momento I was looking for. There’s gotta be some decent commemorative bottle-openers or beer growlers or stuff around the launch, hopefully on the crafty design level of this pro packaging work — some seriously well-done-up déclassé signaling.
The related “draft brew” angle I did see while on the trip, even in Roxbury: Dunkin’ branches with bold rows of tap handles, for their new array of draft drinks. Kickin’ the emergent draft / beer / coffee crossover motif, quick on the heels of Starbucks, and with epic full-size draft handles, on the level of any full-blooded English pub handles, and just a straight-up smack-down of the poncy little Starbucks taps (right), uggh.
Let’s not kid ourselves, the stakes are high. If you want to see where this is going, or could go if we don’t stick together, behold here the dystopian chic of the new, elite-of-the-elite, Starbucks Reserve stores: here’s the first one, unveiled in Seattle in February 2018:
Now I ask you, does this look like a friendly place where the doers and regular folk go for a bit of pick-me-up and get us on to where we’re going? No, it looks to me more like a brutal, totalitarian-inclined, temple of elite status-worship and child sacrifice. Where you go to be issued correct minimalist/brutalist metal and slate taste. (where, ok, to be honest, I think I’d more likely find, in fact seek out, the kind of high-design momento I look for while travelling.. but putting that aside for a minute). It rather reminds me of..
Apple’s ‘1984’ vision, where the class-arrayed, statuesque forms sit decorously, tastefully, reflectively.. until the heroic, orange-and-white garbed heroic runner bursts in to smash the class structure and the State. Do you want to be the runner, or those who are run? You have a choice, prole. Run, smash, score, with Dunkin’.
Or as expressed in one of Dunkin’ social-media team’s bolder moments, 2015, promoting their sponsorship of Liverpool F.C. and adapting LFC’s theme song: running with Dunkin’, with America, you’ll never walk alone.
I’m with the Dunkin’. I shall not walk alone. I hear America singing.
They’re dropping the Donuts from the brand name in 2019, by the way, because ok, folksy and amusing and Homer Simpson Everyman-esque as the donut motif is, ultimately donuts are fatty, déclassé, and low-margin (requires baking, ughh). So it will officially be just Dunkin’, like people already tend to say, and their main taglines use. And as, hey, naturally fits the increasingly crucial, condensed square version used for digital-era icons on Twitter and smart-phone app icons etc, like so:
like WHAT?? Holy cow, is their new-era square DNKN logo not a genius pun, three letters out of four, on the famous DKNY Donna Karan New York high-end fashion-label icon? It’s like “DKNY*”.. asterisk noting, haha by the way, not that stark haute couture misery, but DNKN, the chubby and rounded colorful fun guys!
How did they ever sneak that past the lawyers and gatekeepers and out to America, to freedom! Stuff it, DKNY! or join us, for a brighter tomorrow!
these Dunkin’ brand wizards, cultural icons extraordinaire, verily skate along the razor’s edge of class-code-switching ironic flair! Allowing even me to feel like I can identify with and signal Everyman taste, me who doesn’t even like donuts or primary colors or souvenirs that aren’t superbly well-considered.
Starbucks, you belching green ghoul, you are sodden, humorless, elitist, tinselry. You do not compare to this brand of majesty, this happy chain on a hill, this world-straddling pride of Boston; this earth, this realm, this Dunkin’.
Epilogue
Below is what I actually ended up with for a trip memento. Sorry Dunkin’, I did my best to work with you, but ended up taking home a different bit of local iconography. Boston’s got a tough competitive field, when it comes to iconic.
It’s a ‘Willibecher’ style 500mL beer glass (one of my favored types, I of exacting tactile/shape preferences in tableware and deskware); from one of Boston’s top-regarded craft breweries Trillium Brewing. Fort Point is the name of a pale ale they make, to announce which this glass was issued; and is the name of the very interesting neighborhood of their original brewery/pub location, in 2013, where I spent a most satisfying half afternoon wandering around on this recent trip.
The glass features a line drawing of the locally iconic, giant lanterns on the nearby Congress Street Bridge, which crossses Fort Point Channel right where occurred the Boston Tea Party in 1773, which helped prompt the War of Independence. A museum and historic re-creation of the ship is connected to the bridge.
I like how the Willibecher form’s combination of round and angular (angular in outline, as it inflects inward towards the top) recalls the round plus straight (paneled) Congress Street Bridge lanterns.
Also..come to think of it, these lanterns mark the spot of… probably the most famous “dunking” in US history! When the Boston “Sons of Liberty” secret organization protested tax breaks given to the East India Company, by dumping 342 crates of their tea in the water, a value of about $1.7 million in 2004 dollars. Possibly Dunkin’ founder William Rosenburg, born just a few miles away in Dorchester, was thinking of this original American supreme dunk on the foreigners and elites and fancy folk. (America founded, still runs, on dunkin’). It turns out my effort to fold trip, Boston, Dunkin’, history, place, into a pinpoint specific object to take home, kind of worked?
References
- Carroll, Matt. 2010. “Snapshot: Dunkin’ Donuts vs Starbucks: Where Do You Stand?” Boston Globe. June 17. Accessed October 23, 2011.
- Club For Growth. 2006. “Latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading” .. from anti-Howard Dean ad)
- Contois, Emily. 2013. “The Dunkin’ Donuts Origin Story: A Meaningful Beginning.” Boston Globe, January 14, 2013.
- Dickinson, Greg. 2002. “Joe’s Rhetoric Finding Authenticity at Starbucks.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 32(4):5–27.
- Hebdige, Dick [1979]. Subculture: The Meaning of Style.
- Hoy, Peter. 2006. “Dunkin’ Donuts: Reinventing America’s Cup of Coffee.” Fast Company. October 25, 2011.
- HuffPost. “Dunkin’ Donuts T-Shirt Goes For Starbucks’ Jugular (PHOTO).” July 8, 2013.
- Pendergrast, Mark (2001) [1999]. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. London: Texere.
- Rosenberg, William, with Jessica Brilliant Keener. 2001. Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey. New York: Lebhar-Friedman Books.
- Schultz, Howard. [1997]. Pour Your Heart Into It.
- Simon, Bryant [2009]. Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America from Starbucks. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Swan, Andy. [2018]. “5 Reasons Dunkin’ Donuts is Dominating Starbucks.” Forbes, Jul 26, 2018.
- Taylor, Kate. [2016]. “Why Starbucks doesn’t franchise.” Business Insider, September 28, 2016.
- Wikipedia (English).
“Dorchester-Milton Lower Mills Industrial District.”
“William Rosenberg.”
“Starbucks.” - Zois, Chris. 2016. “A Historical Look Back at the International Franchise Association.” 1851Franchise.com, February 17, 2016. .
