Who doesn’t love a good donut!?
I know I do — and they taste especially good when I’m on vacation. After all, vacations are all about relaxation and indulgence, right? For those of you who feel the same way, you’ll be glad to know that Dunkin’ Donuts is coming back to Hawaii after leaving us several years ago.
Pacific Business News (PBN) reports that the donut chain, which first opened in Hawaii in 1966, is coming back to the Islands with 15 new restaurants on tap to open across the state under a franchise agreement with Aloha Petroleum Ltd. The popular Massachusetts-based coffee and baked goods shop expects to open restaurants on the islands of Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and the Big Island, the first of which is scheduled to open in early 2017.
Richard Parry, president and CEO of Aloha Petroleum, told PBN the company has signed a lease for a location near the airport, but declined to specify exactly where.
“We want that first one to be something that really makes a statement,” Parry told Hawaii News Now. “We want to make a nice presence with lots of drive-thrus, lots of visibility. So we’re excited about that first one, so we want to do that one right.”
“We’re in discussions with two or three other locations,” he told the publication. “We are also looking at where we have gas stations and convenience stores. In Hilo, there’s a vacant piece of land near an Aloha Gas station and a convenience store that we may look into leasing.”
If you’re wondering where you’ll be able to get donuts in Hawaii, locations could also include free-standing restaurants, displays in existing stores, restaurants within malls, gas station convenience stores, travel plazas, and universities among other real estate formats, according to PBN.
Aloha Petroleum also is targeting areas between Downtown Honolulu and Waikiki, as well as commuter areas where people can grab coffee and donuts and head to work or school in town, including in Hawaii Kai, Mililani and Kapolei. The Dunkin’ Donuts expansion to Hawaii is expected to account for up to 40 new jobs.
“We’ve got almost 100 retail gas stations, and convenience stores, and we think the brand would just fit extremely well with the rest of our retail offerings,” Aloha Petroleum CEO Richard Parry told Hawaii News Now. “We’ll be looking at not just putting it into our convenience stores, but we’re looking at standalone Dunkin’ Donuts, so there will be opportunities where we find a new site that has nothing to do with our existing operations and we’ll build a new Dunkin’ Donuts. We’re looking forward to putting in drive-thrus so people can get a cup of coffee on their way to work.”
For visitors looking for donuts in Hawaii, the same convenience applies. If you need a quick pick-me-up on your way to one of the many Hawaii activities you may have planned for the day, you can always roll through one of the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thrus.
The company’s re-entry into the Hawaii market now gives Dunkin’ Donuts a presence in 42 states across the country, says PBN. And, the largest U.S. retailer of coffee-by-the-cup hoped to more than double the number of its U.S. stores, to 15,000 from the 7,000 it had at the end of 2011.
