Krispy Kreme has announced that in a little over a year, it will soon have robots frosting and filling doughnuts.
Key Details
- Krispy Kreme plans to have robots frosting, filling, and even packaging doughnuts in the next 18 months to cut doughnut production time.
- By cutting production time, the company will be able to increase points to deliver fresh daily to grocery stores and other locations allowing customers to get doughnuts made that day at sites other than Krispy Kreme.
- By the end of 2022, Krispy Kreme is estimated to have roughly 5,400 points of fresh delivery access in 30 countries, bringing in $1.5 billion in revenue and $190 million in annual profit.
- By comparison, Dunkin Donuts generates about $1.4 billion in annual revenue.
- With the new automation, the company predicts more than 12,000 points of access in 45 countries, with plans to bring in about $2.6 billion in revenue by 2026.
Why it’s news
Krispy Kreme is the latest food company to introduce automated robots into its workforce.
The company is adding robots to its production line to cut production time and bring fresh donuts to more stores other than Krisp Kreme locations.
“Probably within the next 18 months, you’ll see some automation starting to go into the frosting, the filling, the sprinkles, and even the packaging,” says Krispy Kreme CEO Mike Tattersfield.
Adding robots to the production line will cut time immensely and allow the store to ship out freshly made doughnuts faster and broaden the number of stores receiving the doughnuts.
With automation usually comes job cuts, but Tattersfield stresses that employees are still at the core focus of the business model. He says the robots will not cut out Krispy Kreme or Insomnia Cookie employees, the cookie branch of Krispy Kreme, just help them not have to do tedious tasks.
“We still are going to continue to drive the experience side with our Krispy Kremers and Insomniacs, so I always find that when companies do a great job, they’re balanced in how they try to do that, and you try to get the repetitive task out of the business,” says Tattersfield.