Thread by @GlobalFinData

Dunkin is looking like it's going private again.

In honor of the news, here's a Dunkin History thread!

Dunkin’ Donuts was founded by William Rosenberg, a Jewish immigrant, who only completed the eighth grade. He began working at the age of 14 to help support his family when his father lost the family grocery store during the Great Depression.

After WWII, Rosenberg borrowed $1,000 and combined this with $1,500 (roughly $25,000 today) he had in war bonds to start his mobile catering service “Industrial Lunch Services” that delivered meals and offered coffee break services to factory workers outside of Boston.

Rosenberg designed his own catering vehicle that had custom-built stainless steel shelves that stocked snacks and sandwiches-- basically a prototype for the current catering vans still used today.

Rosenberg’s focus was on making the customer happy through options and choices.

Shortly thereafter, Rosenberg had over 200 catering trucks, 25 in-plant outlets and a vending operation that delivered food to factory workers.

He observed that donuts and coffee were top picks of the daily visitors, comprising 40% of his revenue.

1948, he opened Open Kettle Donuts, renamed Dunkin Donuts in 1950, which offered 52 varieties of donuts while traditional donut shops offered only 5 different varieties.

By 1990, there were 1000+ stores.

2005, Dunkin’ Brands was sold to Thomas H. Lee Partners, the Carlyle Group and Bain Capital for $2.43 billion. Their plan was to aggressively expand west, offer additional franchises, and offer higher-end coffee drinks to compete with Starbucks.

Starbucks vs Dunkin bellow.

5 years later, the company went public in 2011. The company had 97 million shares outstanding making the company worth $2.7 billion when it IPO’d on July 27, 2011, providing the three private equity groups, each with a 10% return, over their cost of buying the company in 2005.

During the past eight years Dunkin’ Brands has outperformed the S&P 500. The company is now worth over $6.5 billion, providing a 13% annual return to anyone who invested in the IPO in 2011.