Just about everyone who follows business news knows the story of Krispy Kreme. The donut-making darling of the 1990s grew and grew like the waistlines of many of its most loyal customers, opening stores so fast that if you lived in the South, it seemed like there was a Krispy Kreme on every corner.
That excessive growth, followed by sluggish sales and a Securities and Exchange Commission accounting probe sunk the stock price and led some of its largest franchisees to file for bankruptcy.
In the years that followed, Krispy Kreme’s stock price continued to plummet, and it found itself as recently as 2009 on lists of companies most likely to crash and burn. But the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based company has righted itself by closing stores, cutting costs and broadening its offerings. More.