Remember All The Great Donuts That Built This Nation With Free Donuts Today

We know that Friday is usually a time for upbeat thoughts as consumers’ minds turn toward frivolous weekend activities — coating the Slip’N Slide with cherry marmalade, improving your speed-run time on Half Life 2, perfecting your homebrew oxycodone recipe — but today, National Donut Day, we should all remember to pause to remember, and perhaps shed a tear, all those donuts that have perished to get us to this point. And then get free donuts while they last.

As usual, the nation’s larger donut (or doughnut, if you prefer) chains are giving away free stuff to honor the memories of the great donuts that came before and to serve as a beacon of sugary hope for those donuts still to come.

To get a free Dunkin’ Donuts donut, you’ll need to buy some sort of beverage. The promotion doesn’t spell out exactly what kind of donut you get, and we almost always hear stories of ornery franchisees putting tough restrictions on their participation in the deal. That said, if you’re passing a DD and want to score a free donut with your drink, today is the day to try.

Krispy Kreme is more into the spirit of National Donut Day, giving away one of any kind of donut to customers at any participating stores — except, for some reason, in Connecticut. Sorry CT folks, you’ll need to hop on the Interstate and head to a Krispy Kreme in one of your neighboring states to score a deal. Again, this comes with the caveat that franchisees may tell you no just because they are in a bad mood from the freeloaders who get a donut, go into the parking lot to put on a different hat, then come back in pretending to be someone else. You’re not fooling anyone buddy.

And while Tim Hortons might be based in Canada, the chain’s U.S. locations are giving away free donuts with any purchase, so long as you say “Happy National Donut Day” when you order.

But you shouldn’t need the dangled prize of a free donut to get you to say those words. No, you should be walking around the office today, declaring to all your co-workers and everyone else you meet, “Happy National Donut Day to all!”

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