Do Nuts

Even when you work in advertising and are aware of the power great pictures and witty lines can exert on minds, every once in a while you succumb to the same.

This Saturday afternoon the intention was to sit at a familiar Café Coffee Day and get some work done and with this aim in mind we landed up at the Green Park Market where there are two such outlets. As luck would have it the parking space we found was bang opposite a newly opened Dunkins Donut outlet.

The façade beckoned and immediate changes to the plan were made and we trooped into Dunkins with the aim of biting into some amazing doughnuts. A nice warm, lively space greeted us and the staff too took out time to smile at us which was a good beginning. 

We sat down and opened respective laptops and then looked around for something to munch on. May I say that having seen the Mad Over Donuts counter, the one at Dunkins didn’t impress one much. Most seemed replicas of the MOD ones I settled for a cinnamon donut and a hot chocolate while the others went for ice teas. 

This brings us to the point that M.O.D managed to launch at a very crucial time, taking the first movers advantage – most people I know associate Doughnuts with MOD and hence even Dunkins feel like a replica – where possibly it was the inspiration. 

The doughnut was nice though it was initially served cold and had to be sent back for heating, A query that ideally the staff should have asked at the time of ordering itself. The hot chocolate was very insipid and didn’t make one feel happy at all.

With three open laptops we were soon in need of a power socket and thankfully found one close to our table, a quick look around however showed that we had been lucky as it seemed to be the only one. A poster mentioned free wi-fi and when we asked for the same encountered quite some confusion as the staff didn’t seem to have clarity on how it could be activated. Finally they managed to come back with a scratch card and asked us to use the code on it for free wi-fi access with the rider that its only for ten minutes usage. After spending another ten minutes in trying to figure it out we were finally told that the wi-fi connection isn’t functional. 

We still had some work to finish so decided to have a working lunch at Dunkins itself. This thought was of course guided by the amazing food images constantly being beamed at us from a television screen and like I said even advertising execs succumb to advertising, such is its power.

We  ordered hash browns, a classic chicken burger, pepper chicken burger and a cream cheese bagel – sadly except for the bagel none of the burgers really turned out to be anything that one could say was a ‘must have’.

What really took away from the burgers was the quality of the bread which I felt was very dry, almost brittle at the edges giving the burgers a very dry feel. The hash browns were okay, one has had better ones.

Try it out however don’t have your hopes set too high and if I were you I would stay with the doughnuts and not experiment too much. The staff was helpful enough though they could have done with a bit more training.