When Jayson Gonzalez was asked by FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller to speak at the FreightWaves LIVE event in Chicago on Nov. 12 about the difficulties of making interstate deliveries, he had no idea that a special delivery would be made to him.
The 21-year-old gained national attention earlier this year when his budding donut delivery business in the Midwest was shut down by the Krispy Kreme company (NYSE: KKD) for taking the donuts across state lines.
Fuller was moved by the young entrepreneur’s story and reached out to Daimler Trucks North America (OTC: DDAIF) about securing a new Sprinter van for Gonzalez. The donation was announced at FreightWaves LIVE Chicago, with a distribution of fresh Krispy Kreme donuts to the session attendees.
Krispy Kreme staff read about Gonzalez’s venture in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and ordered him to cease and desist.
On weekends, he transported boxes of donuts from a Krispy Kreme store in Clive, Iowa, 270 miles to Champlin, Minnesota, where the donuts had not been available for 11 years, Gonzalez said. He resold them for an extra $7 to $10 per dozen as a way to pay off his student loans, according to a Business Insider article.
Krispy Kreme’s “main goal was just making sure that I was delivering fresh donuts,” he said at FreightWaves LIVE.
Once the story posted on social media that Gonzalez had been shut down, there was an immediate outcry from the community, which received both national and international media attention. According to news reports, Krispy Kreme relented and in early November agreed to support his cross-border donut deliveries to Minnesota, even donating 500 boxes of donuts to his effort.
Gonzalez told FreightWaves that he hopes to restart the venture by the end of November.
Previously he used a Ford Focus to pick up about 50 to 60 boxes of donuts at a time.
With the FreightWaves donation of the Freightliner Sprinter van, “you can now run thousands of donuts to the folks of Minnesota,” Fuller told a surprised Gonzalez, who called it his “Krispy Kreme mobile.”
