Laid off from Krispy Kreme.

What Krispy Kreme layoffs have meant for employees

The Concord closing put the cost of quitting a product on the people who made and packed it. In the job list from the letter Krispy Kreme sent the state, as WSOC described it, 48 of the 102 cuts were doughnut packers, 17 were doughnut distributors and 12 were doughnut makers, and the rest were spread across decorating, sanitation, maintenance, quality control, management and the office. Every one of them was eligible to apply for another Krispy Kreme job, or for severance with outplacement help, the company said. If you're offered both a transfer to another Krispy Kreme site and a severance package, the commute, the hours and the hourly rate at the new site decide whether moving leaves you better off.

Krispy Kreme has given profit as the reason for several of its exits. It called the snack-aisle line underperforming when it moved to close Concord, and in 2025 it ended its McDonald's partnership after finding it unprofitable. Chief executive Joshua Charlesworth told Restaurant Dive in January 2026 that the company had been "very decisive" about its cost base in the third quarter of 2025 and had pulled out "any delivery location that wasn't profitable." He also said, "We had to make an intervention on our G&A, unfortunately," his shorthand for general and administrative costs.

In the same interview Charlesworth separated the work Krispy Kreme wanted partners to take on from the work it kept in its own hands. He said the British, Australian and Mexican businesses were company owned and that he would like to bring in partners to run them, as the company did when it refranchised its shops in Japan, and he said most of the U.S. business was company-owned. The work he described keeping was in North Carolina, where, he said, the company prepared the concentrate for its recipe before sending it to 42 locations around the world, and where every doughnut line in the world was built, under what he called "complete control over that supply chain."

In the United States, the work going to outside firms has been delivery. Charlesworth said Krispy Kreme was outsourcing its U.S. logistics because running a logistics company, a manufacturing company and a retail company at once "was a lot," that just over half of the system had moved by January 2026, and that he expected the rest to follow during the year. He said the outside firms took on the liability and managed their own drivers in-house, with much lower turnover, and that the company had stopped delivering to 1,400 places while still adding new ones. If your Krispy Kreme delivery job is ending and one of those logistics firms offers you work, the last day of the Krispy Kreme job and the first payday at the new firm are the two dates worth lining up.

For anyone let go in the company's home state, North Carolina's unemployment statute ties a claim to how the severance is paid. Any calendar week fully paid for by money received because the job ended is one in which the law says you aren't unemployed, and a lump sum is spread across weeks as though it had been earned working them, so each week it fully covers falls under that same rule. Two things fall outside that rule, a payout for paid time off you hadn't used when a written policy already covered it before the separation, and a week the money covers only in part, in which you can still be unemployed.

A sourced history of Krispy Kreme layoffs

• January 2026, Bronx facility notice

  A New York notice in our WARN tracker, dated January 27, listed 52 Bronx jobs, effective April 30. The site was 535 Havemeyer Avenue, What Now reported, and the cuts were expected to be permanent.

• 2025, Krispy Kreme UK shop closings

  Krispy Kreme UK closed 19 shops in 2025, Grocery Gazette reported, ending the year with 122 as it worked to improve its network. Krispy Kreme's chief executive told Restaurant Dive that the U.K. business was company owned.

• March 2023, Concord snack plant closing

  Krispy Kreme moved to close its Concord snack-aisle factory, with 102 layoffs effective May 11. A spokesperson told WSOC every affected worker was eligible to seek another open job or severance and outplacement help.

• December 2017, Winston-Salem administrative support cuts

  Krispy Kreme told Winston-Salem and state officials that at least 90 employees were being laid off, WFDD reported, and its filings said eliminating the administrative support jobs would take until July. It said it would keep its headquarters and two plants there.

• February 2005, headquarters and plant cuts to save cash

  New management announced about 125 job cuts, the Associated Press reported, affecting about a quarter of the workers at the Winston-Salem headquarters and the mix, equipment and distribution plants, and said the moves were needed to avoid a cash crunch.

What to do if you're laid off from Krispy Kreme

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Krispy Kreme's biggest hubs: North Carolina, New York, Georgia. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what Krispy Kreme's hub states run: North Carolina, New York, Georgia, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.