Krispy Kreme
- Lars Uffhausen
- May 6
- 8 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
June 2025
In This Edition | High-Performance Teams
From Glazed to Great: How High-Performance Powers Krispy Kreme’s Global Success.
Leader’s Corner: | Joshua Charlesworth - Sweet Results at Krispy Kreme |
Howard Guttman: | Quality of Work Life: Why It Matters |
Featured Video: | Decision Making II - Avoiding the Traps |
President & CEO
Krispy Kreme
Joshua Charlesworth is President and CEO of Krispy Kreme Inc., headquartered in Charlotte, N.C. Krispy Kreme is one of the most beloved and well-known sweet treat brands in the world. The company’s iconic Original Glazed® doughnut is universally recognized for its hot-off-the-line, melt-in-your-mouth experience. The company operates in 40 countries through its unique network of fresh doughnut shops, partnerships with leading retailers, and a rapidly growing digital business with more than 17,500 fresh points of access. Their purpose of touching and enhancing lives through the joy that is Krispy Kreme guides their operations every day and is reflected in the love they have for their people, communities, and planet.
Leader's Corner: |
Sweet Results at Krispy Kreme |
You're on a road trip and pass adjacent Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts shops. Which do you choose and why?
I’m headed for Krispy Kreme. The doughnuts are fresh; made with simple, wholesome ingredients; and give that indulgent, melt-in-your-mouth experience. If you’ve ever had a just-made, hot Krispy Kreme doughnut, you’re returning for more! Most people who purchase Krispy Kreme don’t purchase it just for themselves. They typically buy a dozen to share with family, friends, and colleagues.
What’s the voice of the Krispy Kreme brand? What does it stand for—and how do you keep it relevant?
Our marketing team does a phenomenal job of promoting our brand. Krispy Kreme is sold in 40 countries worldwide, and our brand awareness in the US is almost 99 percent. Krispy Kreme generates more than 100 billion media impressions annually. It’s comparable to some of the biggest food brands in America, for a fraction of their investment.
What is the magic to gaining such extensive media awareness?
We make Krispy Kreme relevant to people and for special occasions. For example, we’ve created a special green St. Patricks’ Day doughnut. It commands quite a bit of media attention. We have about twenty-five million social media followers, which is massive for a brand of our size. We don’t have a big advertising budget. Instead, we focus on earned media by engaging influencers, social media, and news media. We create little moments of joy that people cherish no matter what’s happening in the world.
How do you connect doughnuts to those “little moments of joy?”
We participate in culturally relevant moments. For example, as part of a global campaign to inspire people to spread kindness on World Kindness Day last year, we gave the first 500 guests at each of our U.S. shops a free original glazed dozen for people to enjoy and share with others.
A doughnut is a doughnut is a doughnut—or is it?
Krispy Kreme doughnuts are truly special. They are made every day with simple ingredients. There is truly nothing like a warm Krispy Kreme doughnut straight off the production line. You can purchase our fresh doughnuts in Krispy Kreme shops, grocery stores, convenience stores, and at our other retail partner locations. Many other brands produce their doughnuts in a centralized facility, freeze them, and then distribute them to outlets, where some are thawed each day. Not us!
Everyone loves our Original Glazed® doughnut—which is unlike any other. But we also love to innovate. It’s incredible what can be done with a doughnut: from toppings, to fillings, to different delicious flavors of glaze and how you can connect it to seasonal events and holidays, everything from Scooby Doo to the Grinch. So, a Krispy Kreme doughnut is not just another doughnut!
How do you successfully manage an international franchise operation of the magnitude and complexity of Krispy Kreme?
Today, the global business is split about 50/50 between our company-owned operations and our international franchisees. These are not small, individually owned shops, but large, sophisticated companies that operate countrywide.
We hold all our franchise partners accountable for building the brand and meeting our quality standards, yet we give them the autonomy to adapt to local tastes—as in Asia, where we sell specialized green-tea doughnuts. But our Original Glazed® doughnut is the same all over. It’s made with the same secret recipe and proprietary equipment as it was when it was first created in 1937 in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Running a thriving global franchise operation is all about maintaining consistent quality, brand building, and leveraging local knowledge and expertise. We’re continually expanding our franchise business. At the end of 2023, we opened in Paris, where we now have nineteen doughnut shops. We’ve announced plans to open in Spain, Brazil, and Germany this year.
Why did you reach out to GDS?
I worked with GDS when I was at Mars, so I know what a high-performance team can achieve, what a differentiator it is, how it unlocks the potential of the leadership team and its individual members, and how it changes the operating culture of the whole business.
What issues at Krispy Kreme led you to take the high-performance journey?
Before becoming the CEO at the beginning of last year, I worked at Krispy Kreme in various roles for eight years. I was keen to establish a solid relationship with the senior team and wanted to change the way it operated and how it was led. I reached out to Pete Elder of GDS for support.
What were you looking for from the GDS process?
I first wanted to educate the team about what a high-performance team looks like. What does it mean to be enterprise-focused? What behaviors are essential? What are the implications of operating in a cross-functional environment? And what does it mean for teams, functions, and the organization? My other goal was to accelerate performance and create a safe environment to provide one another with feedback.
And what feedback did the team share with each other?
We shared feedback about strengths and weaknesses; communication styles; how to have better, more powerful conversations when there is disagreement; how we reach alignment, and how to give each other feedback going forward.
When did you start the Krispy Kreme high-performance journey?
We started our high-performance journey in early 2024, with in-person and virtual alignments, follow-up sessions, and check-ins. The team embraced the development opportunity. We were clear about what was expected, so there were few surprises.
What’s in the works going forward for your high-performance journey?
We recently added three new members to our leadership team. The high-performance journey will always be a continuous one. This year is about ensuring that new leaders are well integrated and that we continue to embed high-performance ways of working into how we operate.
What are the two or three most important changes you’ve seen in how your team operates?
As a team, we worked to ensure a sharp focus on the largest opportunities for Krispy Kreme and to provide clarity in achieving our goals. We now begin meetings with a check-in on previous commitments and accountabilities, then focus on priorities and decision-making going forward. You’ll hear, “These are the cross-functional issues; here’s an update, and here’s what we have to decide.”
What has been the payback from Krispy Kreme’s high-performance investment?
Krispy Kreme is on a transformational journey. Companies that are considering this will find the clarity and transparency that comes from a high-performance approach. It identifies and tackles key structural issues, creates less decision drag, improves communication company-wide, and helps a company move faster to get results.
If you had to retake the high-performance journey, would you?
Yes, I would. I believe in holding up the mirror to both the team and to myself as the leader. It’s what the high-performance process does well. Beyond the leadership team, I’m also focusing on the 23,000 people who work here and on the organization's culture, which has been formed over many years. It’s all part of our continuing high-performance journey.
Quality of Work Life |
Why It Matters |
by Howard M. Guttman
Quality of Work Life (QWL). It’s unlikely to be a hot topic in today’s boardroom or executive suite. It’s not that the quality of life within organizations is unimportant or shouldn’t be addressed. It’s more that the phrase is vague, capable of infinite permutations, and prone to mischief. What factors contribute to enhancing QWL? How do you measure its impact? What’s its ROI regarding boosting performance and results? Without clear thinking, anything goes: from providing free coffee, daycare, and dress-down days to setting up an open bar with free alcoholic beverages, as one cable news outlet has done.
Make no mistake—today’s organizational environment raises deep concern for employees' well-being. Workforce reductions, economic uncertainty, sketchy organization performance, and the technification of work are fast paced, fundamental, and fundamentally unsettling. In a challenging economic environment, where many feel they’re not winning, self-worth and psychological security on the job are compromised.
When you shuck away the peripherals, whether or not your organization passes the litmus test of QWL respectability depends on this: When you and others in your organization wake up each morning, do you jump from bed enthusiastic about the day ahead, or do you dive under the covers muttering, “Take this job and shove it!”
QWL is less about “stuff” and more about meaning. It’s about self-esteem on the job: feeling valued, being respected and heard, and making a difference. And all this translates into how productive a worker you are. Just about every study that I have read on the subject, from Gallup to the National Institutes of Health, shows a direct correlation between QWL and issues relating to burnout, turnover, and job performance.
Here’s a quick test to assess the quality of work life in the eyes of beholders: your organization’s employees:
A cumulative score above 32 typically indicates that your organization is managing QWL well. Note the focus on what’s observable. What’s the evidence that performance relating to the four QWL indicators is or is not what you think it is? How do “meaning” and “satisfaction” play out in what can be observed and is measurable? Remember: If it can be measured, it can be managed.
The four QWL factors must be refined into specific, tangible behaviors. For example, “evidence of being valued” might include involvement in decision-making, receiving positive feedback and recognition, or being fairly evaluated against specific performance objectives. Or “being in sync with your values” might include the extent to which an organization is aligned with employees' need for “straight talk” and keeping agreements.
Leaders who manage QWL well are unafraid of the “F” word—Feelings. They are comfortable discussing employees’ personal assessments of their worklife environment. We recently worked with two organizations that were in the midst of a significant workforce reduction: one a global retailer and the other in the beverage industry. In both cases, the CEO and executive team members met with employees, helping them process their feelings about the downsizing and laying out a positive plan going forward. Employees left the meetings less anxious and more committed to their organization.
In our consulting work, we have found that high-performance leaders go beyond task fixation. They focus on results and how they are achieved and on building relationships rather than staying transactional. They understand that organizations are complex entities in which strategy, structure, systems, processes, culture, capabilities, and patterns of human interaction all intersect. Each must be aligned for an organization and its people to prosper.
The horizontal, high-performance model offers an unrelenting focus on goal clarity, transparency, honest feedback, accountability, openness in dealing with conflict and other issues, shared decision-making, reflection, and reassessment—these drive teamwork and employee engagement, which, in turn, drive productivity and results.
QWL is not some fuzzy gotta-have. When QWL is high, employees’ minds, hearts, and both feet remain fully engaged and at peak performance.
Decision Making II: |
Avoiding the Traps |
by Howard M. Guttman
Want to increase your decision-making success? Here’s how.
Tune into Howard Guttman’s take on Avoiding the Traps
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