Parker Leaves Winchell’s After Restructuring It

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 company said it hasn’t found a successor. Officials there and at its privately held owner, Shato Holdings Ltd. in Vancouver, B.C., 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 which 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.

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.

Parker said she expects to remain in the food-service business.

Jukebox salesman Verne H. Winchell started the doughnut empire with a single store in Temple City in 1948. It had grown 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 in 1987, selling 58% of its stock to the public for about $90 million.

The chain, which lost $12.8 million in 1988, had 657 stores when Shato acquired it in 1989. More than a third were quickly sold to PepsiCo’s Pizza Hut, leaving just under 400.

Parker continued to cut, leaving the chain with 200 company-owned stores, 90 franchised stores and 40 small, unconventional outlets in locations such as gas stations and sandwich shops.