Vegas Donut Wars

When we stayed with my friend Chris in North Las Vegas last year, we were delighted to find a Dunkin Donuts near her house. Peter thought we’d left the franchise behind east of Chicago, but here it was, appropriately enough, in Sin City.

So for breakfast on this trip, we wanted to go to a Dunkin Donuts in Las Vegas. I asked the parking valet, who sadly admitted he only knew where the nearby Krispy Kremes were, but one of his colleagues remembered seeing a Dunkin Donuts on Sahara near Valley View.

I joked to Peter, “Dis here’s a Krispy Kreme town. But Dunkin Donuts is moving in.”

Peter riffed: “Nice donut shop you got here. Would be a real shame if people couldn’t get to it. Say, if there was to be construction, and road blocks…”

Laughing, we headed to Dunkin Donuts on Sahara. Color us surprised when we got there and the only driveway to it was inexplicably blocked by a series of cement pillars, the kind you see protecting federal buildings from drive-in car bombs.

Peter was not deterred. He drove up a side alley and found back way in. But when we parked in front of the Dunkin Donuts, it was closed. “Come see us in two weeks!” a sign cheerily announced. No indication for how many weeks that sign had been there.

So Peter enlisted technology to our aid. He and I tried to pull up a listing of the Dunkin Donuts in Las Vegas on our iPhones. But even with 5 bars up on the AT&T network, the page would not load. Luckily, having recently become mobile internet geeks, we also had a Palm Pre among us, and that had not been compromised.

Neil found only 2 other Dunkin Donut stores in Las Vegas. One number rang through to a “please hold” recording at the Fremont Casino. The other was answered by a man with a heavy Spanish accent who said the store was not open.

I waited through the hold line at the Fremont Casino,which confirmed that yes, there was a Dunkin Donuts in the casino. And they had their own number, which was answered by a real person surprised to find out other Dunkin Donuts were not open, or non-existent.

As it turns out, there was indeed construction in our way the Last Dunkin Donuts in Vegas. Lots and lots of construction. Every time we tried to follow the GPS directions, we hit a roadblock. The construction workers drank their coffee and looked at us suspiciously. (And it wasn’t Dunkin Donuts coffee they were drinking.)

We had to wing it and just head in the general directions along another street. As we got close, a suspiciously well-dressed man hurled himself in front of our car, but we successfully veered around him.

Finally, we saw the Dunkin Donuts sign, but..there was no place to park. This is highly unusual in Las Vegas, where every casino, strip joint, and barbecue pit not only has copious parking, but also valets to park your car for you, so you can get on with the important task of doing as many bad things as you possibly can before you have to go home.

Here, there was no street parking. The few parking garages nearby were full–at 8 am on a Monday morning.

I had Neil call the Dunkin Donuts in North Las Vegas. He got a recording telling him “This number has been disconnected.” Gulp.

We finally found a spot in a pay garage three blocks away. It was plastered with lots and lots of Krispy Kreme ads. And we had to walk past a Krispy Kreme store on the way to the Fremont Casino.

But there it was. Surrounded by a casino, this Dunkin Donuts had protection from the Krispy Kreme mob.

We bought 2 dozen donuts, and carefully walked back to the car. And then we fled, our precious loot in hand, keeping our eyes open for renegade Krispy Kreme vans until we’d left Las Vegas behind.