Dunkin' Progress at Cooper Foster and S. Broadway

It's taking a little longer than I expected for the new Dunkin' to be built at the intersection of Cooper Foster Park Road and South Broadway. But I imagine it's in the home stretch now.

It really wasn't that long ago that the little house and tall trees were still there at the intersection. 

Here's roughly the same view from over the weekend.

I still think it's not the greatest location for a coffee and donut place. It's hard enough to get in and out of Flowerama across the street there, and it will probably be even more difficult when you add the additional traffic from Dunkin'. We'll see.

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Dunkin' Donuts seems to have first appeared in our area in the fall of 1977. It was still in the planning stage in the spring of that year, and 'help wanted' ads showed up in the Journal in early November.

Here are the earliest ads I could find that ran in the Journal. The address of the shop at that time was 929 N. Leavitt, which today is just to the north of the Mr. Hero in the small shopping strip on the east side of the highway.

Nov. 21, 1977

Nov. 28, 1977

Feb. 1, 1978

It's interesting seeing Munchkins mentioned in the ad. I had forgotten that originally, Dunkin' used a Wizard of Oz tie-in to market their donut holes. Over time, however, the Wizard of Oz angle was dropped and the pieces of dough themselves became anthropomorphic.

Those Munchkins characters sure remind me of Timbits (the Tim Hortons donut holes).

The Timbit character used to have eyes, although they were so big they looked like olives.

 

Although I don't get up to Canada very much these days, I satisfy my yearning for Tim Hortons donuts and Timbits by visiting the restaurants in Ashland, Fremont, Columbus, and the Toledo area.

I've done two posts on Tim Hortons (so far).