I grew up in Minnesota, and Krispy Kreme was legendary while they had stores here. Schools and workplaces would commonly bring in hot, freshly-baked donuts to motivate students and employees.<p>And then Krispy Kreme left the state. After that, it became common for university students to do fundraisers where they drive to the nearest out-of-state Krispy Kreme to fulfill orders. Of course, now the donuts are not hot after the 250-mile drive, but the brand is still very powerful.<p>I just don't understand why Krispy Kreme doesn't open just ONE store in Minneapolis. Maybe we don't have the demand to fulfill one hundred stores, but only having one store would be clearly profitable.
Is it just me or is Krispy Kreme really trigger happy with its lawyers? I only have two points of data - this and Froggy Fresh.<p>But still, are there any companies out that that don't care to fire off petty lawsuits when people use their name or resell their product at small scales?<p>Like, if I made a unicorn called "Hukino" and then 10 years later some YouTuber used that as his rapper name or some college students made "HukinoOS" or someone started reselling my widgets in the arctic... would it kill my company if I just ignored them? Is there a precedent of a company not aggressively protecting its IP getting screwed over?<p>I'm just trying to imagine a world where companies like Nintendo don't instantly axe projects like Chrono Resurrection/Pokemon Uranium/AM2R/etc. because that's the kind of world I want to live in.
I'm happy for the kid and surprised KK didn't see the backlash coming but there's also something that makes me a little uneasy about this. Deciding not to sell in a market seems like a totally reasonable decision and it seems just a little too easy to exploit social media blowback for individual profit.
By 21 years old I think you're no longer a "kid".<p>In any case it seems like he needed the money to pay for college so he ran a side hustle. The only thing that's remarkable here is, when found out, he used social media to turn it into a PR issue which in turn forced Krispy Kreme to deal with it on PR terms rather than legal ones.