The NDG Dunkin' Donuts is no more, it would appear. The doors have been locked for several days and the phone unplugged, the building owner is Duc Huy Trang but I couldn't reach him for comment either.
The long decline of Dunkin' Donuts is well-known but little understood.
Quebec franchise owners blamed HQ for not allowing them to customize their menus for local tastes, which doesn't really strike me as the main reason they went down, even though a judge agreed and awarded the plaintiffs millions.
I had theorized that the ongiong mockery by Rock et Belles Oreilles undermined the brand among francophones, as I noted that the ones in anglo parts of town seemed lesser-hit by the carnage.
Those who recall Tim Horton's move into the province might've recalled their skepticism that such an obviously anglo and Toronto-sounding brand coudl succeed here.
But the reason that the Dunkin' Donuts @ Sherbrooke at Beaconsfield went belly-up, I would venture to guess, lies in its lowbrow clientele, welfare recipients who were so comfortable at their regular haunt that they'd brazenly eyeball strangers who dared to venture in, as if you had walked into their living room.
They would even openly talk to each other about other customers right in front of them, from my experience.
The fact that the donuts were gooey and half-cooked and quite awful didn't help much either.
To be honest, I used to HATE going into that DD on Sherbrooke so am not sad to see it go. It was disgusting in there with a bad atmospehere and used to always secretly say "oh gawd", every time my mom and I went down Sherbrooke and she wanted to have a drink and smoke outside there. Good riddance.
ReplyDeleteThis is further proof that NDG is falling behind California....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business/companies/130116/dunkin-donuts-california
Nooooooooo!
ReplyDeleteI think Dunkin Donuts is the best, and if I ever really ate donuts I would bet that would be the one I would go to. I guess that's off my list of things I should do but never get around to:(
Another thing. Quebec just does not seem to be a big donut place. What do we have here? Tim Hortons, that's it. Dunkin is barely holding on here for dear life, even Krispy Kreme disappeared, compared to other provinces that seem to have more choice when it comes to donuts and the US where donut shops are found far and wide, public cos, mom and pops, they are everywhere.
ReplyDeleteThen again, try and find a proper baguette down there.
I know no one in Montreal cares but Tim Hortons is really a Hamilton company. The first one opened near the Stelco plant to serve shift workers, mostly Italians. The next few also opened in Hamilton.
ReplyDeleteBut I know that to Montrealers Hamilton is the same as Troronto - even if Hamiltonians hate Toronto more than Montrealers do... ;).
Nailed it.
ReplyDeleteTheir doughnuts are raw.
Yuk.
Donuts being junk food--lambasted by the media--it should come as no surprise that they are fading away.
ReplyDeleteNext in line: coffee shops?
I used it's parking lot when went to an adjacent SAQ ( open till 22-00).
ReplyDeleteOverall DD was a dirty place. Good riddance.
All the Dunkin Donuts were frequented by down and outers. The one on the corner of Bleury and Ste. Catherine across from Musique Plus was sketchville 24hrs. It closed what about 8 years ago and became a cafe. The Dunkin Donuts on the corner of Mont-Royal in front of Metro Montreal was filled with down-and out people, and became Black Cat Cafe which is bad coffee and overpriced and filled with weird people. I always wondered why Dunkin Donuts seemed so low rent. I felt I needed to carry a can of lysol and spray the place if I was to go in, which I rarely did. The best donut place ever, and I say EVER - was Mr Donut. I think it was near Dorval Avenue. They were baked fresh from what I remember when I was a kid.
ReplyDeleteTim Horton's is slowly klling off DDs in the USA. Last time I was in Buffalo there seemed to be a Tim's nearly everywhere there and along the way
ReplyDeleteThe Mr. Donut in Dorval was on Herron Road, between Fenelon and Dorval Avenue, next to the TraveLodge, and the current home of Duffy's Pub-Lounge.
ReplyDeleteThere were Dunkin' Donuts locations on 32nd Avenue in Lachine; on Dorval Avenue in Dorval; St-Charles in Kirkland; Pierrefonds Blvd, Pierrefonds (between St-Charles and St-Jean); St-Jean and de Salaberry in Dollard (once robbed by 1 of the Hilton Brothers); and Harwood Blvd. in Dorion (became a Dic Anns and then a paint store).
@ UrbanLegend:
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing you haven't been to a coffee shaop lately?
For me, DDs weren't hangouts, just handy places to stop for coffee after work. The two I would frequent (at different times were the one on Pie IX at Boul des Grands Prairies, and the one on Jean Talon near Cote des Neiges.
ReplyDeleteAlways preferred their coffee to that Horton's muck.
If you love donuts, fret not.
ReplyDelete2013 will be to donuts what the past few years have been to cupcakes.
You're going to see handmade donuts appearing on high-end resto menus for dessert, bacon-filled donuts, boutique donut stores.
Of course a half dozen will set you back $15, but whatevs.
-Kevin
Apparently Starbucks was having financial difficulties awhile back.
ReplyDeleteI don't drink coffee, but in Central Station after lunch I would sometimes visit a coffee shop to purchase a large oatmeal raisin cookie or something similar from one of the coffee shops there. I generally found the quality of their bakery goods and pastries very good.
The Central Station food court would be jammed to the gills with people Monday to Friday.
The fact that some fast food franchises seeingly allow deadbeats to continually congregate within their premises to the extent that it chases away "non-regular" clients is incomprehensible, given that most restaurants would surely put a stop to such a practice.
Liken it to newsstands and book stores discouraging "browsers".
You'd think that fast food management would wise up and take action to save their business?
Ugh, that place was really scabrous.
ReplyDeleteBut cupcakes aren't always the answer. A cupcake shop on SHerbrooke called Inninya opened up a few months ago, was open for a few weeks and has been vacant and unused ever since, even though all the stuff is still in there.
Three other DDs were: on Laurentian (now Marcel Laurin) and Cote Vertu; on Jean Talon near CDN; and on Peel & St. Cat (now Harvey's).
ReplyDeleteThe Lachine location (a 30+ year landmark) closed middle of 2012 and is now a Thai Express.
Dunkin' was to Quebec what Tim Horton's was to Ontario. The only Tim Horton I knew when I was young was the one across from Rockland, which is still there.
They need to have homeless police brigades like in Brazil the clean up the street kids from the street. Put them homeless into vans and give them beatings with phone books and batons, then have camps outside of the city where they would be taken and permanently made to work breaking rocks or something. There is no reason why homeless people should be allowed. Mental illness is an imaginary thing created by big-pharma, and nobody becomes alcoholic if they are educated and well off. Beat em, lock em up and let me roll in my Roller and not worry its paint is going to be dirtied by street people let alone have to see them! Scott (25 yr old business entrepreneur)
ReplyDeleteDDs were ubiquitous in New England when I was a kid; now THs have made serious inroads, last I saw there.
ReplyDeleteI remember coming up to the Expo as a kid; we stopped just over the border into QC at a DD, and I was surprised to see things like cheeseburgers on the menu, so I guess at the time the locals *were* allowed to customize the menus. (My dad's cheeseburger had ground glass in it, though...!) Halfway through our tour (just as we were entering Bucky's geodesic dome) I came down with appendicitis, spent the night in the Royal Vic (thanks to a college friend of my dad's who was a doc there), and flew home (Air Canada, which was OK in those days) the next day for the operation. We always speculated that it was precipitated by something I ate at that DD.
If all 25 year old entrepreneurs think like this one here, I'm voting for the Bolsheviks at the next election, just for the pleasure to see them carted-off to Ungava.
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When I lived in Côte-des-Neiges, I once went to the Tim Horton's (their doughnuts are slightly more cooked or rather less raw than DD's, so it was worth it to walk the extra 300 feet to the Tim Horton's), and the cops were in there because some guy was sitting there with a box of Dunkin Donuts: "T'es chez Tim-Horton avec une boîte de Dunkin Donuts? T'as un problème, mon gars!!!"...
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Wasn't the first ever Tim Horton in Cochrane, Ontario? Because that's the last one I have been to, in 2000...
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As much as I dislike doughnuts, I'll have doughnuts over cupcakes anytime.
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The best doughnuts I've seen were fried in the old bakery at the Atwater market (before the market got revamped and irremediably yuppified some 15 years ago); on my way to work, I'd often pick a bag of a dozen, picked up as they emerged from the grease of the conveyor-belt fryer...
The first Tim Hortons opened in Hamilton & his partner was Ron Joyce a police officer maybe he knew what a good doughnut was. Mr Horton was know to get his Leaf teammates to make personal appearances at his stores & on a few occasions paid off his teammates appearance fee in baked goods rather than cash as Johnny Bower can attest to that's alot of doughnuts back in the day......
ReplyDeleteDunkin is awesome in the States, albeit nothing great coffee. their doughnuts, muffins, sandwiches, everything is much better than Tim Horton's. Sadly, DD in Canada sucks.
ReplyDeletePassed by the NDG location this afternoon, it is indeed gone forever. Sad, as it was one of the few remaining Dunkin' Donuts stores left in Montreal. The only other location I'm aware of is at Place Ville Marie, and it's actually a food-court counter type deal than a full fledged store.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I can tell by the signs, the NDG store will be demolished and replaced by, what else, condos.
Dunkin' Donuts was a big part of my childhood growing up in Laval, still sometimes get cravings for a cherry cake flavored donut!
Well, the NDG Dunkin' Donuts was finally demolished last week (mid-August 2014). It's fenced off and excavation has begun to build condos in that spot.
ReplyDeleteOn an interesting note, there are now only 4 Dunkin' Donuts left in Montreal (actually the only 4 left in Canada!). The Verdun location is the only one left that bakes fresh donuts on site, the other three are merely food court counters at malls which have baked goods delivered to them.
So for all intents and purposes, the Verdun store is the last one standing.
I remember when the DD opened in NDG in the late 70s, and demolished in August 2014, Mr Trang was a great mnager/owner, on many occasions he donated donuts to my school free of charge, I went every day to pick up coffee etc, never had a bad experience, the cashiers were always pleasant, Yes Verdun is the last actual store with a kitchen and delivers them to the other 3 in food courts, like they say on tv Its worth the trip!!!
ReplyDelete