Controversy and criticism of dunkin donuts

In 1997, Dunkindonuts.org was founded by a customer, for disgruntled consumers and employees to lodge complaints about the company. The site appeared before the company's own website in many search engines, and received national media coverage before being purchased by Dunkin' Donuts in 1999. Dunkin' Donuts has been criticized by some of its franchisees for allegedly coercing them out of business at large financial losses. Dunkin' Donuts has sued franchise owners 154 times since 2006. Over the same stretch of time, McDonald's was involved in five lawsuits. Subway, a company that has four times the number of locations as Dunkin' Donuts, sued its franchisees 12 times. However, these figures do not include arbitrations, which Subway, McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts use in bringing legal claims against their franchisees. Franchisees allege that the company's larger business strategy requires multi-unit franchisees who have ample capital and can open numerous stores rapidly to compete with Starbucks. In 2009, the company temporarily stopped the sale of two of its products, the Dunkaccino and hot chocolate, after concern of a possible salmonella poisoning at a supplier's facilities. Dunkin' Donuts claims that none of the beverages were contaminated, but the recall was made out of safety for its consumers. In 2009, the Kainos Partners Holding Co., which owned and operated 56 Dunkin' Donuts, filed for bankruptcy. The company claimed to owe an amount between $10 and $50 million. Bart Thorne said that one of the primary causes for bankruptcy was the economic recession that was occurring at the time. In May 2010, Dunkin' Donuts was criticized for advertising "Free Iced Coffee Day" on its national Facebook page, which only took place in 13 cities. Because of the limited scope of the promotion, many customers became dissatisfied with the lack of free iced coffee and vented their anger on the Dunkin' Donuts Facebook page. In 2013, the Dunkin' Donuts chain in Thailand used an advertisement that contained a photograph of a woman in black face-paint, in order to promote its new chocolate flavored donuts. The company was criticized for the advertisement, with the Human Rights Watch calling the advertisement “bizarre and racist”. The headquarters in the United States apologized for the advertisement. Nancy Lewis, in Canaan, Connecticut, began a petition in January 2014 to request that Dunkin' Donuts donate their unsold food to local shelters and food banks in her area after seeing her local shop regularly throwing away "large amounts" of unsold food. She said because the company has no universal directive on the redistribution of its unsold food items to shelters or food banks, and employees are not allowed to take any home, many affiliates throw all of the goods away. On July 23, 2015, the company's CEO, Nigel Travis explained that increasing minimum wage for workers in the state of New York to fifteen dollars an hour was "absolutely outrageous."