Why there are no Dunkin’ Donuts in Los Angeles
The most common question asked in L.A. is not why there is so much traffic on the 405 (there are too many cars, duh). It is not why Heather Locklear looks perpetually 34 (she keeps a Dorian Gray portrait in her Malibu attic). It is why there are no Dunkin’ Donuts franchises in southern California.
My friend Hayden put off his dick-joke writing deadline one night to research the answer. And by golly, I think he found it through a few targeted Google searches. Why are there no Dunkin’ Donuts in L.A.? The answer is simple:
The Cambodians.
It is estimated that 90% of all the donut shops in Los Angeles are currently owned by people of Cambodian descent. This is an astounding figure. Apparently a few pioneering immigrants in the 1970’s moved over to the U.S. and learned the donut trade from the ground up. Slowly and surely, these pioneers bought their own shops and supported subsequent waves of immigrants by providing jobs and informal training in the deliciously doughy trade.
It makes sense. If you are a penniless, newly arrived immigrant, what are you going to do? You are going to learn the trade that your countrymen learned before you.
And thus the Cambodian donut shop owners became a victim of their own sweet success. Over the last few decades, per capita donut consumption has steadily declined but the number of family-run donut shops has steadily risen.
This is my own theory, but it seems that a corporate franchise like Dunkin’ Donuts simply deemed the donut market in L.A. to be too saturated. No room for growth because of the Cambodian immigration miracle. In addition, I would guess that corporate chains would incur higher labor costs than individual donut shops relying on a network of family and friends.
Something to ponder next time you crave Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. - H. Lee
P.S. a fascinating and ultimately sad story of one of the donut pioneers can be read here: http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/19/local/me-donutking19
P.P.S.: the delicious donuts pictured below are neither Cambodian nor from Dunkin’ Donuts. Surprisingly they were found at a wonderful dim sum restaurant called Koi Palace in Daly City.
