THE SNAKE PIT 4^TH EDITION 2016 (Friday, May 6, 2016)

THE DOUGHNUT THAT WE’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR FROM KRISPY KREME HAS OOZED UNEXPECTEDLY ONTO SOCIAL MEDIA

Biding your time in the food industry is important as the element of surprise can ultimately boost the sales of a new concept or product, but the element of surprise is defeated when the new product is accidentally released on the unsuspecting audience.

A bunch of people in the UK were utterly confused as they received an email from favourite doughnut makers Krispy Kreme which was addressed to “store managers” informing them about the brand new Nutella-centred doughnut which is due to be released to the public on May 27^th. The email was purposeful and strongly coated with hysterical examples of during testing “people fainted due to the euphoria it created” whilst other ‘experimentee’s’, “squealed” and “dribbled” as a result of the irresistible doughnuts. It does prompt the question of what audience exactly Krispy Kreme were ‘feeding’, one obviously with extremely sensitive and explosive tastebuds. The most ironic feature of the email was that is expressed on more than one occasion the confidentiality of the email and the importance of concealing that confidentiality, “all of the information in this memo is highly confidential and is not to be shared via any form of social media or to be discussed with guests in store”. The best part about this memo was the mistaken recipients of the email weren’t hesitant to post the email on social media, particularly on Twitter, and did so hastily.

Talking about mouth-watering, doughnut oozing excitement, Krispy Kreme is determined to launch along with the Nutella Doughnuts, a ‘doughnut ATM’ in London. The doughnut dispenser will be in the centre of London and will cost consumers about £2 (around $4 Australian dollars) and the proceeds will go to the Teenage Cancer Trust. Now every time you purchase a sugar laden, calorie jammed (pardon the pun) doughnut you won’t feel guilty about it. This vending machine will be revolutionary in the sales of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. However this still doesn’t top my personal favourite vending machine; the canned bread vending machine in Japan, yes imagine a world where a large loaf of bread could be squeezed into a regular size can, 信じられません!

Krispy Kreme however seem to be a bit behind with Australia’s mad cravings for Nutella doughnuts and although Nutella has been in Australia for around over 37 years and crazily as soon as the popular spread was put into a doughnut the population went mad demanding more Nutella doughnuts. Literally small cafes, bakeries, news agencies and retail stores were writing up bold signs with the capitals ‘WE HAVE NUTELLA DOUGHNUTS!’ But Nutella hasn’t just made resurgence in doughnuts; crepes, frappes , milkshakes and even pizzas are all featuring Nutella. The Nutella hysteria began through guess what? Social Media. It occurred when a small milk bar in Fawkner started selling Nutella-filled doughnuts, a photo of the lightly frosted sprinkled doughnut with a circle of the iconic spread of Nutella oozing out of the middle of the doughnut captured the eyes of millions, enticing them to try the newly arrived doughnuts. It wasn’t too long before establishments saw the popularity of the doughnuts and either starting importing them or making their own for sale. The sales of the doughnuts were going through the roof with an establishment selling up to 4000 Nutella doughnuts a day, with over 4300 doughnuts sold on one particular day. Astounding!

Nutella has been reborn with its recent popularity in doughnuts but in Snake Pit style I researched more into what has made Nutella so successful throughout history. The first thing that was weirdly true was that Napoleon and Hitler were responsible for the world’s Nutella addiction.  According to an article written by Mental Floss, in 1806 Napoleon in a ploy to win the Napoleonic War and ultimately succeed in world domination, Napoleon created a continental blockade, which caused the cost of chocolate to increase significantly. Chocolatiers were to the rescue adding chopped hazelnuts to chocolate to stretch the supplies as much as possible. The paste created was named “gianduia”, however over a century later in War ravaged Europe in the 1940s chocolate again became expensive due to rationing of supplies. As a result, the hazelnut was again used to save the days and in 1964 the name was changed of the irresistible paste to Nutella which derives from the English word ‘nut’ and the Latin suffix ‘ella’ meaning sweet.

Nutella is seriously popular in the world and the reality is that even though doughnuts have reiterated the brands popularity around the world as one jar of the loveable spread is sold every 2.5 seconds. The spread is sold in 75 countries and Nutella is so highly sought after that in 2013 in Germany thieves pulled off a $20,000 heist stealing 5.5 metric tons of the sweet spread from a parked truck, that’s true Nutellamania. In Italy in an effort to boost the sales of Nutella at markets an incentive was created for customers. This incentive was to bring a piece of bread to get a free “smear”, and it was highly successful and it saw the sales of the iconic jar of Nutella rise rapidly.

In characteristic Snake Pit style the discussion doesn’t end there, you see what’s to suggest that possibly the email was purposefully sent out to unassuming customers to spread the word of the new Nutella doughnuts in the UK and make it look like an innocent mistake by Krispy Kreme. I mean Krispy Kreme did apologise but in the letter it gives the precise details, quite conveniently, of when the doughnuts will be in and out of stores, is this helpful for a target audience, of course it is! Not only that the memo besides the information about the doughnut wasn’t overly confidential, it didn’t mention staff names or contact details it seemed like a pretty innocent email that wouldn’t have made a big difference to anyone’s identity or career if it did “accidentally” ended up in the general publics hands. This all seems like an email intended for the audience, made out to be for Krispy Kreme’s eyes only, let’s say this, if Krispy Kreme were so worried about the email getting out to the pubic they would’ve made the email even more secretive, even possibly in some sort of code, but no I’m blowing the lid off this one, that email was intentional for the general public, shame on you Krispy Kreme.

On top of this I believe the recent changing of the original and loveable Arnott’s Shapes is a ploy to bring wanted attention to the brand as sales most likely would’ve been stagnate or declining for the savoury treats to prompt this. The new shape flavour has been hugely belittled by the general public in Australia who have become use to the flavour of the iconic BBQ shapes. The angry public making videos criticising the shape flavours, posting frustrated statuses and more importantly begging Arnott’s to bring back the original flavours. With this increased coverage over 32.4% of the Australian population have eaten the savoury biscuits in the last week with the highest percentage unsurprising the generation most likely to send a tweet, 14-17 years with a total 36.3% of the age group consuming the savoury biscuits.

However what many people don’t know is that “BBQ Shapes Original…will still be available alongside the new BBQ flavour.” But the public was ignorant to this and instead thought it was end of the original BBQ shapes. Arnott’s haven’t stated whether they will remove the new flavours due to unpopular demand but they will most likely get the flick, so whose the ultimate winner? Arnott’s, and it’s simple why. Throughout all this social media publication of the poor flavours in the new Shapes, more and more people have been talking about Shapes and buying the new flavour to see whether the critics are right. Shapes have become popular again and they are laughing all the way to the bank.

Similar to Nutella, the introduction of a new edition to the already popular doughnut franchise of Krispy Kreme has reminded us of why we love Nutella and why they are still being purchased worldwide every 2.5 seconds.

Michael Serpell