So many customers came into Vernon Carter Rudolph’s shop in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, asking for doughnuts hot out of the fryer that it was hard for him to balance kitchen and customer responsibilities. So in 1937 the entrepreneur cut a hole in the kitchen wall out to the street to streamline the process of getting doughnuts from kitchen to customer. Warm doughnuts became Rudolph’s hallmark, building his Krispy Kreme Doughnut shop into an enduring, highly successful business with a legion of loyal customers.

Today demand is as hot as ever for Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The company (http://www.krispykreme.com) has grown from a Southeastern icon to an international franchise with stores in 41 states and six countries. Since 2001, Krispy Kreme has more than doubled its retail locations to more than 360, and has opened its first stores outside of North America. The rapid expansion created challenges in making sure products were always fresh and available, challenges that no longer could be solved by cutting a hole in a wall. Krispy Kreme now relies on a route automation system from Intermec Technologies Corp. (http://www.intermec.com) and Velocitor Solutions (http://www.velsol.com) to streamline deliveries from kitchen to customer.

“The savings we’re gaining from the mobile system allow us the ability to better utilize or sometimes mitigate the need to add additional resources that we may need to support our expansion,” said Krispy Kreme CIO Frank Hood.

The winner of the 2003 Enterprise Mobility Award in the Distribution Category was the Krispy Kreme Route Accounting System, developed by Velocitor Solutions.

Krispy Kreme operates over 140 company stores that are independent of its franchise locations. In addition to serving walk-in customers, these company stores prepare doughnuts to be sold at other retail outlets. Route drivers operating from the company stores make daily doughnut deliveries to supermarkets, convenience stores, service stations, and other retail locations. Mobile computers, printers, and route management software are being rolled out to all the company stores primarily to streamline end-of-day processing and back-office operations. The system—custom software developed by Velocitor teamed with Intermec’s award-winning 740 Color mobile computers and PW40 mobile printers—also saves time for route drivers and improves efficiency at customer sites.

“We are admittedly a late adopter of handheld technology,” Hood said. “We were not going to implement handheld computers until the technology was mature and stable enough for us to be able to support them with a small IT staff. We needed the system to be as fault-tolerant as paper. Unless maybe you break your pencil, paper is not going to fail in the field. Paper doesn’t run out of batteries or stop working because a system goes down. It’s great for disaster recovery.”

The morning routine

The new system provides the reliability of paper without the burden of paperwork. Krispy Kreme’s self-written demand-planning and forecasting system at its Winston-Salem headquarters calculates a suggested order for every retail outlet, every night. The orders are transferred to IBM AS/400 computers at each company store. Orders for each route, the six-week sales history for each outlet, plus notes or special instructions for the driver are downloaded to the 740 Color before route drivers arrive in the morning. Drivers pick up their computers and then begin their daily deliveries. Krispy Kreme delivers fresh to every outlet every day, so routes stay consistent and drivers know them well, which led Krispy Kreme to rule out the use of wireless dispatch for route operations.