It’s baaaack …
After a five-year hiatus in Tucson, Krispy Kreme is poised to return with a factory store in a new shopping plaza on East Broadway near Craycroft.
The store at 5621 E. Broadway, which will produce doughnuts in house, could hire as many as 150 employees by the time it opens April 26, said Lisa Hignite, senior operations manager with the California-based franchisee Hot Glazed Enchantment Inc.
It will be the first Krispy Kreme in Tucson since Phoenix franchise operator Dan Brinton pulled out of the market in summer 2011.
Hot Glazed has eight Krispy Kreme stores in the Phoenix area, where it has been operating since 2011.
“We’re excited to bring it down south,” Hignite said.
The Tucson store is now recruiting managers and a GM; you can find links to the applications on Facebook. Hignite said they will begin hiring crew members on April 1.
Krispy Kreme’s tumultuous history in Tucson dates back to late 2002, when the city got its first store across from Tucson Mall; a second location opened in spring 2003 near El Con Mall. Both closed without warning in August 2006, with the owners leaving trays of fresh donuts uncovered in racks behind the stores.
Six years later, in summer 2009, Brinton blazed in with three stores — one in the burgeoning Cortaro Road/Interstate 10 corridor, a second on North Oracle Road in Oro Valley and a third across from Park Place mall on East Broadway. All three were gone by early summer 2011.
Krispy Kreme on Broadway is going into a new plaza being built where Christian Faith Fellowship church once stood. In addition to the doughnut shop, the plaza is expected to include a El Pollo Loco restaurant and Tucson’s first location of the California fast-casual pizzeria Blaze Fast Fire'd Pizza.
According to the Blaze website, the Tucson location is slated to open in the fourth quarter of this year.
