Vernon Rudolph

Vernon Rudolph was an American businessman and the founder of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.

Vernon Rudolph

Vernon Carver Rudolph was born to parents Plumie and Rethie Rudolph on June 30, 1915, in Marshall County, Kentucky. He was the oldest of two sons. He graduated from his local high school before joining his uncle in Paducah, Kentucky, to work at his uncle's grocery store.

By 1939, Vernon Rudolph married his first wife, Ruth Ayers, from Atlanta, Georgia. They adopted a baby girl in 1943 named Patricia. Ruth died in 1944 as a result of a car accident in South Carolina. In 1946, Vernon Rudolph remarried, marrying Ina Lorraine Flynt from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. During his second marriage, the couple had four children.

When Vernon Rudolph went to work with his uncle, Ishmael Armstrong, it was after Armstrong had purchased a doughnut shop, along with the assets, name, and recipe from a New Orleans chef, Joe LeBeau. In 1933, Rudolph began selling the yeast-based doughnuts door-to-door for the Krispy Kreme Doughnut shop in Paducah, Kentucky. Further, he took part in producing the doughnuts, giving him an all-around experience in the doughnut business.

The Great Depression affected the little shop, and Ishmael Armstrong decided to move from Paducah, Kentucky, to the larger Nashville, Tennessee, with the hope that business in the larger city would be much better. However, in 1935, Armstrong sold the shop and returned to Kentucky. Rudolph wanted to purchase the store, but he did not have the money for it. Instead, his father, whose own general store had closed, stepped in, borrowed the money, and purchased Krispy Kreme for Vernon Rudolph. At this time, Vernon's younger brother Lewis joined the family business. In 1936, Rudolph's father opened a shop in Charleston, West Virginia, and a little later, opened a third shop in Atlanta, Georgia.

An early Krispy Kreme storefront.

In 1937, Vernon Rudolph left Nashville with two friends in his car carrying the equipment necessary to start a doughnut shop, and he eventually settled on Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the new shop. The choice for Winston-Salem came, apocryphally, when Rudolph stopped to smoke a Camel cigarette in Peoria, Illinois, while considering a suitable location (and following some disappointments) and noticed the cigarettes were manufactured in Winston-Salem. The story goes that, with only $25 dollars in his pocket, Vernon Rudolph got to Main Street Winston-Salem, where he rented a space, bought the ingredients, and began making the yeast doughnuts.

An early Krispy Kreme counter.

The doughnuts were originally sold to grocery stores, but passersby would smell the doughnuts and watch them being made, as the original store made the doughnuts in the front window. These passersby would ask for doughnuts on the spot, which led to the development of Krispy Kreme's retail operations. Following the success, Vernon Rudolph decided to franchise the Krispy Kreme business. The arrangement gave the franchises the Krispy Kreme name, recipe, and ingredients and ensured they agreed to adhere to the Krispy Kreme philosophy of only selling the highest quality doughnuts.

An early Krispy Kreme storefront showing the beginning of standardization.

In 1946, Vernon Rudolph began to consider consolidating the Krispy Kreme resources under a corporation, which was intended to help the Krispy Kreme grow further and give the shops a sense of uniformity. This led to the formation of the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Company in 1936; a year later, this company was incorporated as the Krispy Kreme Corporation. The company concerned itself with daily store operations. Whereas the corporation focused on producing dry mixes used by the shops to ensure consistency across the storefronts and the brand. Further, the formation of the corporation allowed for the creation of three important departments: the Mix Department, the Laboratory, and the Equipment Department.

Each department has had an important role in the success of Krispy Kreme. The Mix Department is responsible for mixing, in bulk, the key ingredients necessary to make doughnuts and other new products, such as fried pies and honeybuns. The Laboratory, created in 1949, allowed Vernon Rudolph to test ingredients, prepare mixes, and experiment with new ingredients to develop the best quality doughnuts. Rudolph started the Equipment Department after their main supplier of yeast doughnut machines, the Doughnut Corporation of America, decided to enter the retail doughnut business.

One important development from the Equipment Department came with the Ring King Junior. This seven-square-foot machine cut, fried, turned, and cooled from thirty to seventy-five dozen doughnuts per hour. The machine saved space, time, and ingredients when compared to the manual manufacturing of doughnuts, further enforcing Vernon Rudolph's philosophy of uniformity and excellence.

By the 1960s, Vernon Rudolph worked to standardize the look of Krispy Kreme stores, with the green tile roofs and the "heritage road sign," which helped brand the Krispy Kreme store as they began to open outside of the southeastern region. Krispy Kreme was the story of Vernon Rudolph, and vice versa. After Rudolph's death in 1973, Krispy Kreme would operate independently until 1976, when it was purchased by Beatrice Foods Company. Unfortunately, the new ownership worked to increase profits rather than maintain the values put in place by Vernon Rudolph, and that would be the case until the early franchisees purchased Krispy Kreme from Beatrice Foods Company in 1982.