It is often said that “lady of the night” is the oldest profession. Could be. But right up there with that would be “doughnut maker”. Archaeological evidence of doughnut-like substances has turned up in every corner of the globe, especially in early American cultures. But the doughnut as we know it arrived in Manhattan, New Amsterdam with the Dutch, who called them olykoeks (oily cakes).
The name doughnut supposedly hails from the 19th century and a New England woman named Elizabeth Gregory, who put walnuts or hazelnuts in the center of her nutmeg, cinnamon and lemon rind spiced olykoeks, thus “dough nut”. Those early ones did not have holes in them…legend has it that Mrs. Gregory’s sea captain son, needing both hands on the ship’s wheel in a storm, skewered his doughnut on a spoke of the wheel, thus inventing the hole. He later denied that any such thing happened, but it makes a good story, doesn’t it?
Until the 1920s, all doughnuts were made by hand. Adolph Levitt, a Russian immigrant, was frustrated by having too much demand and not enough doughnuts at his stand on Broadway in New York, so he invented a machine for mass producing doughnuts. By 1930 he had two huge doughnut shops across the street from each other at Broadway and 54th Street in the theater district, plus a thriving wholesale business, and was reputedly grossing $25 million a year. He put his machines in the shop windows and doughnut making became a spectator sport. His machines were the “the food hit of the Century of Progress” at the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair.
So now, to Krispy Kreme. According to many accounts, Ishmael Armstrong (some even claim 18 year old Vernon Rudolph), who ran a grocery store in Paducah, Kentucky, bought a doughnut shop or a secret doughnut recipe from a former New Orleans French chef named Joe Lebeau in 1933. No such person has ever been found. And there was no doughnut shop to buy in Paducah in 1933.
In the early 1930s, Armstrong operated a grocery store on Hill Street in Paducah. Not far away lived a man known as Joe LeBoeuf.
Joe LeBoeuf grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana. At age 16, he went to work as a cook and deckhand on an Army Corps of Engineers dredge barge on the Mississippi River. In the early 1930s, he was transferred to Paducah on the the Ohio River. He and his young family lived on Broad Street, near the river front. In 1949, LeBoeuf was transferred to Louisville, just upstream. After his retirement, he became the First Mate on the tourist river boat Belle of Louisville. He died in Louisville in May, 1999, never having had any idea of the role that he played in the Krispy Kreme story.
In 1999, a few months after LeBoeuf’s death, Carver Rudolph, son of Vernon Rudolph, went to Paducah to investigate the Krispy Kreme story. There, local historian Barron White showed him the site of Ishmael Armstrong’s 1930s store and revealed his findings about Joe LeBoeuf. Some years later, the West Kentucky Star quoted Carver on what he discovered.
“LeBoeuf worked as a cook on a barge on the Ohio river and was famous for three things–his flapjacks, his coconut cakes, and his light and fluffy doughnuts. Uncle Ishmael probably admired the recipe…and LeBoeuf would have been flattered to share it…no secret transactions involved.”
In 2000, Louisville Courier-Journal columnist Byron Crawford tracked down Joe LeBoeuf’s widow and daughters in Louisville. They agreed that Joe, who continued to make his doughnuts at home long after he had moved on from the barge cook trade, would never have charged any money for his closely held recipe. And they pointed out that his favorite commercial doughnuts had always been Krispy Kreme: “That’s the best doughnut I ever ate,” he would always say after eating one.
But he had never called his own doughnuts Krispy Kreme, and he never had any idea that his recipe was connected with Krispy Kreme. That name was certainly coined in 1935, when Ishmael Armstrong closed his grocery store in Paducah and opened his Krispy Kreme Doughnut Shop on the Charlotte Pike in Nashville. He brought with him his young nephew Vernon Rudolph, whose job was selling to other businesses. They were soon joined by others, including Vernon’s father Plumie and his younger brother Lewis.
Later that year, Armstrong decided to return to Paducah. He sold the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Shop to Plumie Rudolph. The next year, Plumie opened a second Krispy Kreme shop in Charleston, West Virginia, then a third in Atlanta.
In 1937, Vernon Rudolph went to Winston-Salem, North Carolina and opened the fourth Krispy Kreme establishment. There he was joined by his brother Lewis. With two energetic young men at work, the Winston-Salem shop soon became the center of the Krispy Kreme universe. The brothers hired Benjamin Dinkins, who worked on the production line at T.W. Garner Foods, to design the Krispy Kreme logo that we all know so well. By the end of the 1930s, they had opened several other shops.
Most of the new shops were operated either as partnerships with local owners or franchises. In 1946, the Rudolph brothers incorporated the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Company. The next year they formed the Krispy Kreme Corporation. The company oversaw the operations of the various partnerships and franchises. The corporation produced dry mixes to make the doughnuts more uniform at all locations.
In the early 1950s, they invented their own doughnut machine, which they dubbed the Ring King, Jr. Each machine could turn out 30-75 dozen doughnuts per hour. By the late 1950s, they had 29 Krispy Ring Kings operating in 12 states. After Vernon Rudolph’s death in 1973, the company was reorganized, then purchased, in 1976, by Beatrice Foods, which changed the logo and the doughnut recipe. Unhappy with those developments, a combine of franchisees bought the company back from Beatrice and restored both the logo and the doughnut recipe. Since then, the Krispy Kreme story has been an up and down hill run, three steps forward, two steps back, but Krispy Kreme is today a name known worldwide.
In 2016, JAB Holding Company acquired Krispy Kreme for $1.35 billion, paying $21 per share to stockholders. JAB is owned by four members of the German Reimann family and is headquartered in Luxembourg. In 2017, Krispy Kreme fired 90 Winston-Salem employees while establishing a presence in Charlotte and London. Most of its headquarters staff and all of its plant and manufacturing operations remain in the Twin City. Every year, about 10 billion doughnuts are manufactured in the United States. A bit more than one in ten is a Krispy Kreme.
In 1997, Krispy Kreme donated a Ring King, Jr. and the company archives to the Smithsonian. The doughnut machine and the archives are housed at the National Museum of American History. The archive, NMAH.AC.0594, consists of 16.5 cubic feet of boxes, flats and folders.
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The First Krispy Kreme
What is the likelihood that two separate companies would arise in two separate places at about the same time using the same stylized spelling “Krispy Kreme”? Close to zero, one would think. But it happened. We are told that the first ever Krispy Kreme doughnut shop opened in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1930. It had nothing to do with the later Nashville / Winston-Salem Krispy Kreme. It spread rapidly west of the Mississippi and in the Midwest. We have found ads for it in Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, and even one in Asheville, NC by the late 1930s. It lasted into the 1960s in some places. It is easy to spot their ads because they use the spelling “donuts” instead of the correct spelling, although some early “real” Krispy Kremes also used “donut” occasionally. At the moment we know no details of its origins, but eventually we will.
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North Carolina Collection 
Fam, on top of the story as always🍩
This is so enlightening!
I was told that David Downs invented the glaze that is on the do I. Any truth to that. David had a daughter, Linda who was in our class at Reynolds.
Yes, I remember Linda Downs, a smart and sweet girl. The KK glaze was already present when Vernon opened the fourth store here in 1937…I don’t imagine they changed it much, because you don’t mess with what is selling…they may have tinkered with it a bit, which could have been something that David Downs did…
I love reading your enlightening stories!
So much history of W-S must be imbedded in your brain and file cabinets. Thank you so much for sharing!
Carver told me he never saw his Father eat a doughnut…
Mr. LeBouef actually lived in Shively. Used to fix his doughnuts at home and gave us kids plenty. Because the doughnuts tasted exactly like Kristen Kreme, he had to know they were the same recipe.
PS He was a Captain on the Belle if Louisville