Krispy Kreme Beats Starbucks To Take Title Of Nation’s Best Coffee Shop Brand

If you’re looking for coffee, chances are that names like Starbucks, Peet’s, and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf may pop up in your head. If that’s the case, you’d actually be missing out on the newly named “best coffee shop brand” in the country. That’s because the top dog isn’t known as much for its coffee — it’s more famous for its donuts.

A post shared by Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (@krispykreme) on Apr 9, 2018 at 10:40am PDT

That brand is Krispy Kreme, who just took away the top coffee brand title from Starbucks in the Harris Poll’s EquiTrend survey. The annual study, now in its 30th year, has 77,000 participants look at familiarity, quality, and purchase consideration to see who deserves to be named the best in their field. Starbucks knocked Dunkin’ Donuts from the top spot in 2017 for its first-ever title, but couldn’t hold onto it this year.

Krispy Kreme may sound like an odd choice for top coffee shop, but if you think about it, it makes sense. They’re known for their ‘hot sign’ and fresh donuts, and their coffee can be bought both in-house and in retail stores. That’s plenty of brand recognition right there, and at 1,000 locations nationwide, the chain is pretty well established as too.

Sure, it doesn’t have the size or reputation of Starbucks, who’s got 26,000 locations to its name. But the people have spoken, and they say that Starbucks has some catching up to do if it wants to reclaim the title of America’s best coffee business.