In 1809, Washington Irving, the American author and essay as best known for the short story

Rip Van Winkle, published his History of New York.

In the book, a passage describes, quote, balls of sweetened dough, fried in hogs fat, and

called doughnuts.

Arguably the earliest known usage of the term.

The sweet fried flour treats became an American staple over the next century and a half, and

in 1934 an enterprising teenager named Vernon Rudolph and his uncle Ishmael Armstrong

opened a doughnut shop of their own in Nashville, Tennessee.

The curiously named eatery survived the Great Depression and thrived in its aftermath,

expanding throughout the South, and then in the 1990s into the rest of the U.S.

However, the turn of the 21st century saw turmoil as overly aggressive expansion led

to market saturation and a wildly optimistic IPO was followed by cratering stock prices,

notable even in the internet bubble era of pets.com.

Still Americans kept coming back and the chain fought through that setback to continue

serving its hot now dessert for breakfast.

Now with over 1000 locations, this doughnut shop is gone for being a fixture of the American

South to having a presence throughout North and Central America, Asia, Australia, and

the Middle East.

This week on Doe Boys, Crispy Cream.

Open a doughboys a podcast about chain restaurants.

I'm Nick Wiger alongside my co-host Mike Mitchell the Spoon Man.

How are you doing, Spoon Man?

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