I read a March 2, 2025 report in the New York Post titled Newark man stole more than $18K from 14 different Dunkin’ Donuts locations across New Jersey: cops. 14 Dunkin’ Donuts. Nowhere else? Why only Dunkin’ Donuts? Let us set that aside. You can learn about the robbery spree from the source. I linked to the source because it inspired me to share my own idle thoughts on different Dunkin’ Donuts locations.
(Note: I am aware that Dunkin’ Donuts officially changed its name to Dunkin’. It do not recognize the change, however.)
I went to high school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Class started at 8:30 in the morning. We were usually allowed to go upstairs around 8:00 when the first teachers arrived (the front desk lady was there before the teachers). During my senior year of high school I would arrive at school at about 7:30-7:40. I would go inside, leave my bag with the front desk lady with whom I got along, and then walk to procure coffee.
(I share another 12th grade high school story in an article about being student editor of the high school newspaper.)
There were multiple Dunkin’ Donuts in Bay Ridge. I assume that is still the case today, but I have not been to Bay Ridge in a few years. I forget the exact location of the Dunkin’ Donuts I frequented, but I am reasonably confident it was on 3rd Avenue. It was probably an 8-10 minute walk from my school. There was nothing special about this Dunkin’ Donuts on the surface. It was clean inside, but not especially big. There were a few tables, but nothing about it made me think I wanted to sit there. I distinctly remember three ladies worked there, one clearly being the manager and two working the counter.
(Note: There was a Starbucks location much closer than the Dunkin’ Donuts. I am not a big fan of burnt coffee, however, so I went to Dunkin’ Donuts for better coffee and snacks.)
But little did I know at the time that this was actually a special Dunkin’ Donuts. Firstly, it had a great selection of fresh donuts. Different Dunkin’ Donuts have different slates, but this one had more donuts than most. While my favorite Dunkin’ Donuts donut is Boston Kreme, I usually bought the Old-Fashioned Donut, which is one of Dunkin’s cake donuts, for my 12th grade breakfast-snack (note that I usually ate something small before leaving my home in the morning). But the donut was not the main point of my adventure, the main point was coffee. I recall Dunkin’ Donuts had (I assume still has) four sizes of coffee. There were the expected small, medium, and large sizes and then a super large size – I forget what it was called, but some call it a tub. I went for the super large with milk and sugar. I think I sometimes had it with a little bit of caramel or opted for the hazelnut, but it was always the same formula. This is where we get into what made this a top-class Dunkin’ Donuts.
At this Dunkin’ Donuts, the coffee was brewed fresh and kept in glass coffee pots not thermoses. When they poured your coffee into the giant eco-friendly Styrofoam expanded polystyrene foam cup, you saw them pour the contents of the glass coffee pot into your cup. You knew this was freshly made coffee, especially in the morning. I kept going back, day after day, because this coffee was consistent. While Dunkin’ Donuts is Dunkin’ Donuts and not the best coffee one will taste, it is solid-enough coffee when brewed properly and with care. This franchise took pride in brewing coffee with metronomic consistency. I do not recall ever having a lukewarm or off-tasting cup.
After buying my coffee, I would bring it back to school, go upstairs, deposit my stuff in my locker, and get ready for first period. First period that year was calculus class. Calculus was a bit odd that year. While my entire class had somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 students, very few of them took calculus. The school gave 12th graders a choice between calculus and finance. The finance class was obviously a joke, and it unsurprisingly proved to be much more popular. My calculus class consisted of just eight of us – and two of the eight were actually 11th graders who were one year ahead in math. Because our class was really more of a group in terms of size, it was held in the small computer room instead of a real classroom. There were no desks in the computer room. Instead there were long tables along the walls. Those were not suitable for calculus because they were covered with computer monitors and keyboards. This may come as a shock to some young’uns, but we did not use computers in most classes in my school back in the late 2000s – lest one count our TI-83/84/89 graphing calculators. To make the computer lab somewhat amenable to a computer-less math class, we had to bring a folding table in every morning, unfold the folding table, and then poach chairs from the computer desks. I was often partially responsible for bringing the table into the computer lab since I was always early.
(Aside: I noted in my article on being student editor of the school paper that I unnecessarily purchased a TI-89 Titanium graphing calculator in the summer between 11th and 12th grade and I put it to unexpected use for the school newspaper. A friend of mine in the class, one of the two 11th graders, followed suit after I said I was opting for the TI-89. This led to a few minor complications since everyone else had the more common TI-83 or TI-84 line calculator, and the teacher was more familiar with those than the TI-89. This occasionally led to having to hunt down the equivalent TI-89 feature or function for the only two of us with the better and fancier calculators. But let it be said I had no regrets – the TI-89 was much more pleasant to look at than the 83 and 84, and I recall it being easier to see a history of recent calculations.)
I will share a little aside before returning to my Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast. I featured the computer lab where I had calculus in two articles about my 10th and 11th grade years at the high school. My 10th grade story featured my esteemed New Leaf Journal colleague, Victor V. Gurbo, exhibiting tyrannical tendencies in furtherance of publishing an issue of the school newspaper. My 11th grade story The Model and the Model Maker featured an SAT prep class in the computer lab (which involved no SAT prep) when one of my classmates exclaimed : “Yo! You’re the model and I’m the model maker!” That second story has a deeper connection to my calculus class than one would expect. The classmate who gave us the model maker line was not known to be a good student. I do not recall him ever having worried much about his grades or having been academically inclined in any subject (he was a good athlete, however). Yet shockingly, to the confusion of me and others, he was one of the six students in my year (excluding the two 11th graders) who opted for calculus over finance. To his credit, he put his head down and worked hard in calculus, and while he was obviously the weakest student in the group, he managed to pass the midterm and final on his own by the skin of his teeth. He was proud of his work. It was strangely touching to see. I was rooting for him – but I did not see that drive in any other subject that year, and I still have no idea why he took calculus and took it seriously.
But I digress. Back to Dunkin’ Donuts.
Despite this being a class and taking place in the computer lab, I was allowed to enjoy my coffee and donut in calculus. My coffee stayed warm in the eco-friendly expanded polystyrene foam cup so much so that it would still me warm when I reached second period if I did not finish it first. Now one may ask if it was difficult for me to enjoy my coffee and donut while taking notes. “Not at all!” I answer – I did not take notes in high school. All my teachers just accepted me as an anomaly. One time I was writing a list on my Dunkin’ Donuts napkin and the calculus teacher noted that it did not look like notes. I agreed. She then returned to the lecture. This was just the way things were. Speaking of notes, my calculus teacher also taught my physics class (which, similarly to calculus, was the less popular choice against what was perceived as an easier alternative). One class I was sitting next to a friend who would be chosen over me as valedictorian. Neither of us were taking notes. The teacher looked at him suspiciously and asked him where his notebook was. He said something to the effect of “oh right” and pulled it out and started taking notes. She did not say anything to me. Lest anyone question my method, I submit for the record that all my grades in calculus and physics were A. (Aside: Not transferable to college in those cases, but the joke is on them since I ended up being a philosophy major.)
One year later, I was a student at CUNY Brooklyn College. Allow me to digress for a moment. I was accepted into two colleges – Brooklyn and Fordham University. I did not visit either before applying, and I chose Brooklyn over Fordham before seeing either campus (it goes without saying I never visited Fordham). I had heard about Brooklyn College from my friend and New Leaf Journal colleague, Victor V. Gurbo, who went there one year ahead of me. Victor, however, was in the Macauley Honors Program. He encouraged me to apply for Macauley. I applied for Macauley at the Brooklyn College campus. I was under the impression that I was only applying for the Macauley program. As you can likely infer, Macauley rejected me but regular Brooklyn College accepted me. I was genuinely surprised that my Macauley application doubled as a Brooklyn College application (it turned out there was one complication with that, but put that aside), so I was surprised by this development. But setting that aside for now, I did visit the Brooklyn College campus once in the spring of my 12th grade year after having already committed to attending. On that trip where Victor showed me around, I spotted a Dunkin’ Donuts only one block away from one of the Brooklyn College entrances in a hectic area of Flatbush known as the Junction. Everything was falling into place: I could rekindle my 12th grade Dunkin’ Donuts magic.
Well… Not quite.
I did regularly go to the Dunkin’ Donuts in the Junction area, and I previously shared a funny story from it about when a friend and I encountered the legendary perennial New York political candidate, Jimmy McMillan, in line at the establishment. But this Dunkin’ Donuts was not the same as my Bay Ridge haunt. It was in the Junction that I understood that I had been spoiled by the Bay Ridge location. This Dunkin’ Donuts kept coffee in thermouses. The cups were not fresh off the drip. As a result, some cups were alright and others were not great, not the best. There were two issues. Firstly, I do not think they brewed the coffee anywhere near as carefully or consistently as the Bay Ridge location I had frequented in high school. Secondly, the coffee was often left to stew in the thermous, and stewed coffee is not good coffee. Lest I sound too negative, the Flatbush Dunkin’ Donuts was not unacceptable or anything of the sort – there are certainly much worse Dunkin’ Donuts out there. But it was what I would describe as a replacement level Dunkin’ Donuts, but not an A+ location like the one I went to in high school.
(Aside: If Flatbush McDonald’s a few doors down from that Dunkin’ Donuts is any indication, a recent New York Post story suggests the “Junction” near Brooklyn College has seen better days, which is not to say that the nicest area back in my day, mind you.)
I learned a lesson from this experience. When evaluating whether to buy a regular coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts, it is wise to see if they have the coffee in pots ready to pour or in thermouses. If they have it in pots and the pots look reasonably full, there is a good chance we are talking about a high class franchise location. If it is metal thermouses, you will have to cross your fingers or spend a little bit extra on a latte or other specialty drink for something that is more likely to be good rather than merely drinkable (granted I have encountered lukewarm lattes at some Dunkin’ Donuts). Of course, this all moot to me now. I now make my own coffee at home with a refined pour-over set-up and almost never buy coffee when I am out. I dare say the only time I have bought coffee in recent years has been when I am out with a friend, which is not too often. It has been about five years since I last visited a Dunkin’ Donuts, but I did go to many between my time in high school and my last visit to one in 2020. (Aside: That most, if not all, of the Dunkin’ Donuts specials are now limited to people who use the app does not make me more likely to go in light of the dual facts that (A) I like sales and (B) I do not download proprietary food apps.)
I never found one on par with the specific Bay Ridge shop I frequented most school mornings in 12th grade.
