[News Article] Dunkin' seeks to pique premium curiosity with 'Wonders' store
Dunkin'
seeks to pique premium curiosity with 'Wonders' store BY
KIM JU-YEON, Korea JoongAng Daily - Dunkin’ is moving away from its East Coast
roots to offer California-style cake doughnuts, croissant and pretzel fusions,
AI-generated flavors and more at its revamped "premium" flagship
store in Cheongdam-dong, southern Seoul. Named
“Dunkin' Wonders,” the shop is Korean operator SPC’s latest venture into the
high-end coffee, beverage and bakery market, with the franchise marketing the
services and items provided at the shop as "exciting, exceptional and
luxurious.” “Our
biggest aim was to add an element of novelty — a feeling of unfamiliarity and
excitement,” SPC vice president Heo Hee-soo said at a press event in the
Cheongdam shop on Tuesday. The store will open to the public on Thursday. "We
looked into global trends for doughnuts and bakeries and benchmarked certain
styles to create the Wondernut, a bulked up, American-size cake doughnut, a
32-layer pie doughnut similar to a croissant, and the chewy Puff doughnut that
has a low-sugar filling.” The
executive also highlighted new doughnut flavors that were made through
generative AI as part of Dunkin’s AI Lab project that will release new flavors
every month. The first three flavors from the lab are yeast-based puff
doughnuts with liqueur- or bourbon-flavored fillings. “Our
biggest focus in making the Wonders products was customers’ needs and the ways
to develop unique recipes to fulfill them,” research and development team head
Park Mun-hyung said. The team focused on creating and mixing different flours
that would best fit each doughnut’s preferred texture and absorb less oil as
well as create sweetness with sugar substitutes, he said. The
low-sugar doughnuts have around 30 percent fewer calories and 80 to 90 percent
less sugar than their predecessors, Park said, adding that their aim was to
reduce sugar, not calories, but that there could be lower-calorie products in
the future. Other
new products exclusively available at the Wonders store are fizzy Coolattas and
a soft-serve ice cream that can be paired with the doughnuts and coffee. A
total of 13 new Wonders doughnuts will be on sale. “The
Wondernuts, inspired by East Coast cake doughnuts, are expected to fill a niche
in a domestic market dominated by yeast doughnuts,” marketing head Shin Su-yeon
said. Wonders
as 'handmade' doughnut production hubs The
company plans to create five to six more Wonders stores in two to three years.
They will be utilized not only as flagship stores, but as hubs for doughnuts
with handmade elements. Wonders
isn’t Dunkin’ Korea’s first try at the premium market. The franchise opened its
“Dunkin’ Live” store, which separated itself from other stores with a unique
design and an open kitchen, near Gangnam Station in 2021. Its “Dunkin’ Busan
Station Ramada” store, which reopened in May, sells products inspired by the
region’s local specialties and also uses generative AI to suggest coffee and doughnut pairings. The
two stores also offer handmade doughnuts made in “hub kitchens” that are
different from the mass-produced factory goods supplied to all Dunkin’ stores. SPC
currently operates two hub kitchens that produce doughnuts partially by hand —
in Seongnam, Gyeonggi and in Busan — which are supplied to stores in a 20- to
30-kilometer (12.4- to 18.6-mile) radius. The company plans to construct an
additional hub kitchen in Incheon as well as in western Seoul. The Wonders
stores will also produce handmade doughnuts and supply them to nearby Dunkin’
shops. The
Gangnam and Busan Dunkin’ shops will be rebranded into Wonders stores and sell
the brand’s products in November, said Kim Jin-ho, business division head of BR
Korea, a SPC subsidiary and Dunkin’s domestic operator. Kim
said Dunkin’ had seen a 15 percent increase in revenue at stores that sold the
handmade doughnuts. The company will further improve its revenue by innovating
value chains as well as saving costs, mainly by automating the production
process and increasing manufacturing capabilities. Source:https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-09-10/business/industry/Dunkin-seeks-to-pique-premium-curiosity-with-Wonders-store/2131842
2024.09.13
>
>
