More Duck Donuts are coming to Loudoun. That’s the headline. Let us explain how we got this information.
First off — let’s face it — there are lots of Dunkin’ Donuts in the area. At our last count, there are at least 12 Dunkin’ locations spread across Loudoun County, with at least two more in the works right now.
And every time we report on Dunkin, we see the comments. “When is Krispy Kreme coming?” or “I sure would love a Tim Horton’s” or “We need a Duck Donuts.” We get it — people want more variety.
So, The Burn reached out to five popular national donut brands to try and find out if they had any plans to expand in (or into) Northern Virginia and Loudoun County specifically.
This was just last week, and so far we have gotten two responses. The big one was from Pennsylvania-based Duck Donuts.
“Duck Donuts is excited to continue its Northern Virginia expansion,” a Duck Donuts spokesperson told us. “We have two Duck Donuts locations under construction in Northern Virginia, one in South Riding and in Winchester. Both locations will be owned and operated by separate franchise entities. We anticipate summer 2023 openings. In addition to these locations, we have franchise agreements for Centreville, Leesburg and Ashburn. These locations are actively looking for sites.”
Regular readers have known about the South Riding Duck location ever since The Burn broke the news last October. But confirmation that they are also pursuing shops in Leesburg and Ashburn is new information. We’ll keep you posted.
The other brands we queried included:
- Tim Horton’s, a Canadian brand that has more than 600 locations in the United States. There are 20 in Pennsylvania and 10 in West Virginia, but none in the Commonwealth.
- Shipley’s Do-Nuts, an iconic Texas brand with more than 300 locations. Shipley’s recently signed its first deal for Virginia, with three proposed locations in the southern part of the state.
- Peace, Love & Little Donuts, a brand created in Pittsburgh that now has roughly 40 locations around the country, including one in Virginia Beach.
- Krispy Kreme, the most mentioned brand by far, has more than 1,400 locations around the world, including several in NoVa.
Besides Duck, we heard back from Tim Horton’s.
“We are excited for our recent expansion into new markets in the US and are prioritizing growth along the East Coast,” wrote Ryan Ferranti, Director of Business Development for Tim Hortons U.S. “We currently do not have a set timeline for the expansion plans in Virginia, but have identified strong trade areas within the market that we would look to develop our Tim Hortons restaurants.”
If we had to guess, Tim Horton’s is a good prospect for eventually coming to Northern Virginia. And Shipley’s Do-nuts seems ripe to come to the area.
They have that deal in southern Virginia, and they recently opened a first store in Maryland — part of a deal to bring 25 stores to that state.
Meanwhile, Krispy Kreme is an enigma. A local commercial real estate broker once told us that Krispy Kreme has really strict guidelines of what they are looking for — specifically high visibility to a major highway.
Our prevailing theory is that Dunkin’ is not opening lots of local restaurants by accident. By “dominating” a market, it makes competitors think twice about coming into the area.
But it looks like Duck Donuts is rising to the challenge, and perhaps some of these other brands will too.
(Image at top: Duck Donuts)