Doughnut delivery is a good and pure thing. Once there were no doughnuts, and now, there are doughnuts! But Hurts Donuts, a doughnut chain with locations throughout the Midwest, South, and Southwest, is corrupting this breakfast treat miracle. It is, per Food & Wine, offering doughnut deliveries that arrive by way of purposefully terrifying clown.
This is, I think, an important distinction. Any clown can be unintentionally scary, just by virtue of being a clown. But Hurts is really leaning in with this whole thing, as seen in the video below.
Okay, yes, admittedly, this is kind of funny. (So is this one.) And yes, I wish there was a Hurts Donuts in Chicago so I could send one of these assholes to my friend Julie’s office. And this is the second year they’re offering this service, so it must have been pretty successful the first time around. So acknowledged.
Yet, my objection stands! The world is terrifying! There are those among us who choose to cope with that terror by eating things like delicious doughnuts, and to have that warmth and comfort corrupted by a guy in a mask who screams at you when you try to take your delicious breakfast treats from him is a bridge too far.
Trista Patterson, the owner of some Hurts franchises in Kansas, told The Wichita Eagle last year that the clown isn’t supposed to be It’s Pennywise, but rather a more all-purpose kind of terrifying clown, so hey, at least it won’t call you Georgie and bite off your limbs. She also told the paper that once she shared a Facebook post about the deliveries, the phone started ringing off the hook.
“This one lady was so funny,” Patterson said. “She called and said, ‘I just want to scare the crap out of my kids. You have to come to my house.’”
Last year, the service cost $25: $15 for the doughnuts, $5 for the delivery, and $5 for the clown. An Arizona location said that this year’s cost would be about $30. That location wasn’t yet taking reservations, but a call to the chain’s corporate line revealed that some are, and that Hurts is receiving a much higher call volume than usual. So if you want to be the asshole that sends somebody some freakin’ clown doughnuts, I’d get on that in a hurry. Just don’t send them to me.