Parker Leaves Winchell’s After Restructuring Doughnut Firm

Nancy Parker, credited with stabilizing the finances of Winchell’s during her five years as president of the doughnut shop chain, has resigned to pursue other interests, the company said Tuesday.

The Santa Ana-based company said it hasn’t found a successor. Executives there and at its privately held owner, Shato Holdings Ltd. in Vancouver, Canada, declined to provide other details about Parker’s departure.

Parker cut management drastically and closed numerous weak stores. She also exploited a well-known name by wholesaling the Winchell’s brand of products to grocery and convenience stores.

In addition, she gave store managers more freedom to choose what products to sell, and many now offer such items as sandwiches to bring customers back after the morning doughnut rush. Two stores even offer Mexican-style chicken.

“We had to stop dictating and start listening,” she said in a statement Tuesday.

Parker, who joined Winchell’s in 1989 as director of human resources and was named president in 1992, improved cash flow by $2 million within her first two years at the helm, the company said.

Jukebox salesman Verne H. Winchell started the doughnut empire in Temple City in 1948. His single store grew to 200 by 1968, when the Denny’s coffee shop chain acquired the business. By the late 1970s, there were nearly 1,000 Winchell’s outlets.

But a strategy of turning franchises into company-owned stores faltered, and Denny’s spun Winchell’s off, selling 58% of its stock to the public for about $90 million in 1987. Shato acquired the money-losing chain in 1989, cutting the number of stores to 290.