DUBLIN – Folks in Ireland are more than just a little excited now that the nation’s first Krispy Kreme has opened.
How excited? Well, more than 300 people were lined up at 7 a.m. at the doughnut chain’s location in Dublin last week for its grand opening, the Irish Times reported. And this location featured a 24-hour drive-thru.
That’s great for doughnut lovers, but not so great for people who live in the area. For residents, the grand opening turned into a bit of a nightmare.
People lined up at the store day and night, jamming the streets of the neighborhood and packing the store’s drive-thru. Oh, and they were loud, too. Drivers sitting in the drive-thru kept pounding their horns, and all that honking kept surrounding residents up until the early hours of the morning.
Krispy Kreme knew it had a problem.
“The reaction to our first store opening has been overwhelming with lots of people enjoying our doughnuts in Ireland for the first time,” Krispy Kreme tweeted on Tuesday. “But we know too that some of the enthusiasm from some drive thru customers has resulted in sleepless nights for our neighbours. We do apologise for this and we are doing all we can to minimize the noise (especially at night).”
So the doughnut empire got down to business, coming up with a plan to relieve traffic congestion and installing signs hoping to bring order to the drive-thru lines and to encourage customers to be more “respectful” of neighbors.
But that wasn’t enough. By Wednesday, Krispy Kreme took to Twitter again to say that it had “listened to our neighbors” and was closing the drive-thru down at night. Now it’s open from 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.
“We anticipated a warm welcome for Krispy Kreme in Ireland and have long wanted to open a store here, but the response has been way ahead of our most optimistic expectations so thank you for your patience,” the company tweeted.
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