The first Krispy Kreme doughnut shop opened in 1937. Vernon Rudolph opened the first branded Krispy Kreme location on July 13, 1937, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The shop operated from a rented building on South Main Street, in what is now associated with the historic Old Salem area.
Rudolph had obtained a yeast-raised doughnut recipe from a New Orleans chef. At first, the Winston-Salem operation mainly supplied doughnuts to local grocery stores. People walking past the bakery began asking to buy the hot doughnuts directly, so Rudolph created an opening in the outside wall for sidewalk sales. That early customer demand helped shape Krispy Kreme’s later doughnut-shop model.
A common mix-up is the company’s earlier Nashville connection. Rudolph and his family had already been selling doughnuts there in the mid-1930s, but 1937 is the accepted year for the first official Krispy Kreme shop and the company’s founding. The first location outside the American South followed in Akron, Ohio, in 1939.