Could Krispy Kreme end the pandemic?
The Winston-Salem, N.C.-based doughnut chain is certainly trying. On Monday the company said it would give its vaccinated customers a free glazed doughnut by simply showing their vaccination card.
What’s more, there is no limit to this giveaway: Customers can get a single free glazed doughnut every day for the rest of 2021. The company also said it plans to start sending doughnuts to vaccination centers throughout the country in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the doughnut chain said it plans to give its workers four hours of paid time off to get the vaccine—joining a growing list of restaurant companies taking the same step.
And Krispy Kreme also plans to give any customers a free medium coffee and a free glazed doughnut every Monday between March 29 and May 24. No purchase is necessary.
“We all want to get COVID-19 behind us as fast as possible and we want to support everyone doing their part to make the country safe by getting vaccinated as soon as the vaccine is available to them,” Dave Skena, Krispy Kreme’s chief marketing officer, said in a statement.
Numerous restaurant chains have been using incentives—including cash and paid time off—to get their workers to get the vaccine as soon as they’re eligible. But this is perhaps the first major offering from a restaurant chain to get their customers vaccinated, too.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 124 million doses of the vaccine have been administered and more than 44 million Americans have been fully vaccinated as of this weekend. According to NPR, about 2.6 million doses are administered each day at the moment.
A growing number of Americans are planning to get vaccinated—69% said they at least “probably” planned to get vaccinated, or have, according to a Pew Research survey earlier this month. That was up from 60% who said so in November. Yet 30% of Americans said they would either probably or definitely not get the vaccine.
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