The Birth of Munchkin Mania

Hi, I'm Brent Menzwar and welcome to my show Just a Moment. As a former world touring musician, turned keynote speaker and author, I've experienced my share of life altering moments that have both broken me and propelled me forward. How you leverage those moments or push through them will define your destiny. Each week on my show, I'll provide tools on how to maximize those moments, as well as interview some of the most successful entrepreneurs, entertainers and athletes on how the power of a single moment change their life. Join me to learn how to change what's possible for your life. It'll take just a moment. Okay, you gotta stay with me on this one because it sounds made up. This is one of the stories where when you hear how it started, you immediately think, no way, there's no chance that's true. But it's, and once you hear it, you'll never look at a Dunkin' Donuts box the same way again. Now listen, full disclosure, I'm a Dunkin' boy. I grew up in New England in New Hampshire, where we gave directions based on Dunkin' Donuts locations. Look, you want to go down a Cumberland Fams and you're going to bang a left down there at Dunks, go down the Diamaco and at the next Dunks just make a right. That was my life. That's how I grew up, especially in the early 1970s. You see Dunkin' Donuts in the 70s is growing fast, but most stores are still making donuts the old school way by hand every morning, batch after batch. Time to make the donuts. Remember that commercial? You see every donut has a hole, which means every donut also creates something else, a little ball of dough. And what do you do with that dough? You throw it away. No meeting, no discussion, no second thought, just trash. Because that's how donuts work, they always have. Now here's where it gets good. At a Dunkin' in Hartford, Connecticut, there's an employee named Edna Demory. She's not in corporate, she's not in marketing, she's not trying to disrupt an industry. She's just doing her job, making donuts, cleaning up, throwing away the centers, over and over. Until one day, she doesn't. And there's no dramatic reason. No big revelation, she just looks at this pile of dough and thinks, why are we throwing this out? So she does something incredibly simple. She rolls the dough into little balls. She fries them, she puts them out. That's it. No pitch, no memo, no approval, and almost immediately something happens. Rumors, don't just try one. They buy handfuls. Kids love them. Herrits love them. People who weren't even planning on getting a donut suddenly say, yeah, toss some of those in too. Within weeks, those little dough balls are making up almost 10% of that store's revenue. Some something that used to be thrown away. Now words start spreading. First around Hartford. Then a little wider. Eventually, Duncan corporate catches wind of it and says, okay, what's going on over there? They test it. At first, they call them exactly what they are. Donut holes. And weirdly, it doesn't work. People treat them like a replacement. Sales stall. So Duncan tries one more thing. They change the name. They call them munchkins after the tiny characters from the Wizard of Oz. And that's the moment everything clicks. As you see now, they're not leftovers. They're treats. They're fun. They're shareable. There's something you add, not substitute. Kids ask for them. Herons grab a box without thinking. They become an impulse buy before anyone even use that phrase. What started as scraps becomes a category. And here's the part that still blows my mind. Duncan eventually builds special machines just to make munchkins. They're not even using donut holes anymore. The waste outgrew the problem it was solving. Today, Duncan sells hundreds of millions close to a billion munchkins every single year. All because one person refused to throw something away without asking a question. And here's where this stops being a donut story and becomes a leadership story. You see, this didn't come from a vision statement. It didn't come from a brainstorm. It didn't come from someone being paid to think big. It came from someone close enough to the work to notice what everyone else had already normalized. You see, that's the danger for leaders. The farther you get from the day to day, the easier it is to confuse habit with truth. Most organizations don't fail because they lack ideas. They fail because they stop seeing what's right in front of them. The real opportunity is rarely in the shiny new initiative. It's usually buried in the parts of the business you've labeled, that's just how it works. Or it's too small to matter. Or not worth our time. You see, that's where Edna was standing. Not the top. Not in strategy. At the place where the waste was visible. You see, great leaders don't just ask, what's next? They ask, what have we stopped questioning? This innovation doesn't always look like disruption. Sometimes, it simply looks like paying attention. So here's the moment for you. What are the people closest to your work seeing that you've trained yourself not to notice anymore? Because the next breakthrough in your organization probably isn't waiting for permission. It's already happening. Right where the scraps are. Thanks for spending this moment with me. I'm Brent Menzwar. And this has been Justa Moment. Byring shows like this, visit surroundpodcast.com.