February 18, 2026

The Junior High Dropout That Created Dunkin' Donuts

13 minutes

In 1847 at the tender age of 16, seaman Hanson Gregory looked at some frying dough and said, “Everything is better with holes”… except his ship hull probably… and created the staple of breakfasts the diabetes lovin’ world over- the doughnut! Or so the story goes anyway. In truth, Captain Gregory’s account of how and why he supposedly invented the doughnut varied over time, and despite a statue being made of him in Rockport, Maine in 1947 commemorating his fried genius, nobody really knows where the holed doughnut came from. Some, including Captain Gregory, claim putting the hole in it makes it so you don’t get a mouthful of grease when you eat the center, but plenty of doughnuts exist that have no holes with no such issue. And people have been frying up such cakes for millennia with no apparent inclination to take the center out, except for occasionally to replace it with things like fruit and other fillings.

Nevertheless, it was in the late 19th and early 20th century that suddenly many decided a hole should be present in such fried dough. As to why, the timing of the change gives arguably the best hypothesis, or at least potentially why it became popular. Around the same time doughnuts with holes first popped up in New York City, bagels were also becoming very popular in the same place and were commonly put on display and sold stacked on wooden dowels. Thus, it is sometimes hypothesized that bakers in New York first got the bright idea to put holes in the dough before frying when one or more of them thought to sell the doughnuts in the same way as bagels- on dowels, which saved display space and, perhaps more significantly, made it easier to sell en masse on street corners. With this hypothesis, making more evenly fried dough may or may not have come into play.

Whatever the case, this holey fried dough rapidly gained in popularity in the early 20th century, particularly receiving a huge boost thanks to WWI and soldiers’ love of them in the trenches.

This all leads us to the topic of today- that time a Jr High dropout might as well have put a hole in people’s pockets with how fast they started throwing money at him when he created one of the most successful franchise businesses in history- The Open Kettle…

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Producer: Samuel Avila

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

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