Krispy Kreme’s Opening Day: Yes, You Should Start Planning Now

If you are the kind of person who would consider getting up before dawn just to attend the opening of a new donut shop in Center City, then I probably don’t need to tell you that the Krispy Kreme going in at the corner of 16th and Chestnut now has an officially scheduled opening date of May 4. I’m sure there are a certain number of you out there who’ve already got that day circled in red on your calendars. And maybe a few more who are counting down the days, minutes and hours until that HOT DONUTS NOW sign finally starts to glow.

But even you total fanatics who’ve got the date tattooed on your necks so you see it every morning while shaving might not know that the good people at the Krispy Kreme home office have got a little something special planned for the big day in Center City. It’s a giveaway, sure. But it’s a big giveaway.

You ready for this?

The new shop is scheduled to open at 6am on May 4, and when it does, the first customer through the doors will get a dozen free Original Glazed donuts a week for a year. That’s over 600 free donuts. You could fill a swimming pool with 600 free donuts. And even if I’m wrong about that, I’d still like to try.

The next 11 people inside will get a dozen free Original Glazed each month for a year–which is not nearly as good a prize, but is still almost 150 free donuts. And that’s about 150 times better than having no free donuts at all.

The next 20 customers through the door will each get 20 free cups of coffee–and that’s still pretty good considering the guy at the front of the line who got the year’s worth of free donuts has probably been sleeping on the street out in front of the Krispy Kreme for a week, peeing into old milk bottles like Howard Hughes and viciously defending his position at the head of the line from crazed Krispy Kreme addicts who showed up five minutes after he did and are now shit out of luck. In the meantime, all you had to do was wake up a little bit early, and now you’ve got 20 free cups of coffee? Stop whining, you wuss.

According to Krispy Kreme, the first 100 customers inside will each get a free Krispy Kreme tee-shirt, too, but that’s just lame. I’ve got enough tee-shirts, thanks, so unless that tee-shirt is made of donuts, I’m just gonna sleep in that day.

And finally, from 2pm-4pm on opening day, EVERYONE gets one free Original Glazed. At least until supplies run out. And having attended a couple of Krispy Kreme openings in the past, I can tell you for a stone fact that they will sell out.

Probably by, like, 2:15.

And how much you want to bet that the total donut junkie who just scored the 52 week’s worth of freebies by camping out on Chestnut Street like he was waiting for Backstreet Boys tickets shows up again at 2pm just to get one more? Because you know what’s obviously better than 624 free donuts?

625 free donuts, of course.