"greensboro north carolina" news and stories

The new pecan and cinnamon rolls. Photo: Krispy Kreme.

A decade after quietly tiptoeing away from its first bagel experiment, Krispy Kreme is rolling out an expanded line of "baked creations," including muffins, cinnamon rolls and decidedly not-sugary bagels.

While the new menu items are currently available only at a single location in Greensboro, N.C., company officials predict folks from Tampa to Tacoma will soon be able to supplement their orders for cream-filled doughnuts and chocolate crullers with a flax-seed-and-barley-flake bagel schmeared with reduced-fat vegetable cream cheese.

"It gives the regular customer some variety," publicist Steve Baumgarner explains.

Krispy Kreme first introduced bagels in 1996, offering them in just three stores nationwide. "We were unsuccessful in finding a product the consumer could identify with," Krispy Kreme VP Jack McAleer told the Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area when the pilot project was shelved three years later. (Perhaps inadvertently reflecting the trouble the Southern chain had connecting with bagel culture, the Business Journal's story was headlined "Krispy Kreme puts the cabosh on bagels.")