John Pham

Krispy Kreme is Never Hot

Thu 13 October 2022

Desserts have never been a calling for me, but I've always had a soft spot for donuts (along with strawberry ice cream, carrot cake, and cheesecake). NYC has some great donuts (shout-out to the tres leche donut at Doughnut Plant), but I'm a sucker for the familiarity of a classic, warm glazed Krispy Kreme donut. When I heard they were giving away free donuts every time their iconic Hot Now signs turned on, I was ready to load up. I had recently moved nearby the Flatiron location.

The donut lover in me was inspired to create my own alert that would check to see when the Hot Now sign would turn on at the Flatiron location. Krispy Kreme's store locator website has an indicator that shows when the Hot Now sign is turned on. So I created a service that would run every 8 mins, check the Hot Now status, and send me a text message saying "HOT NOW!". To my dismay, I had received no salacious text messages for a Hot encounter -- it turns out that the Flatiron location never turned on their light even though they claim it happens twice a day.

Hot Now Claim

I would know because I logged every attempt to check (except when the VPS went offline for a month when it ran out of memory oops)

Hot Now Chart

So it turns out there are many locations in Manhattan that never turn on except for Times Square which, upon further review of the data, never turns off. Every single run says Times Square is Hot Now. I like donuts, but I'm not taking myself to Times Square. I also thought it might've been them purposely avoiding the promotional period (06/08 - 09/05), but this pattern persists well after 09/05. Perhaps there's a strong asterisk on participating locations, but this felt downright deceptive!