Wednesday Walk: The Donut Boss

A donut order as a proxy for leadership, pumpkin season, and more Disney buses in Boston

Aug 28, 2024

Every Wednesday, I offer a few short ideas that I hope will inspire you to do some more reading, thinking, and exploring. Let’s take a little walk together and see where the path leads…

Fall is Coming

As we count down the final days of August, it’s starting to feel like fall here in Massachusetts.

I was out in the fields at Red Fire Farm in Granby a few days ago to pick some herbs, flowers, and cherry tomatoes when I noticed the pumpkins were starting to ripen.

Pumpkins ripen at Red Fire Farm (Heath Racela)

If you’re getting in the fall spirit, I hope you’ll skip Starbucks for your PSLs this year (because genocide, anti-union stances, letting their new CEO commute to work by private jet…).

But if you’re visiting a different coffee shop in town, making coffee at home from whole beans, or using a K-cup, you’ll want to hear my latest podcast episode with Austin Frerick, author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry.

The book looks at seven sectors of the food industry that are dominated by large players, and most surprising to me was the consolidation in the coffee industry. There’s now a single company in Luxembourg (JAB Holding Company) that owns Peet’s, Caribou Coffee, Einstein Bros Bagels, Bruegger’s Bagels, Manhattan Bagel, Krispy Kreme, Pret A Manger, Panera Bread, Stumptown, Intelligentsia, Green Mountain, and Keurig-Dr. Pepper. The wildest part- JAB only entered the coffee industry in 2012!

If you’d like to learn more about this, the podcast episode drops Thursday on all podcast platforms, but paying members get early access (like, right now actually). If you’re looking for a reason to upgrade your membership, want to support the work that I do here, and are curious to hear what Austin has to say about food in America, please consider upgrading today:

What Donuts Say About Leadership

I must have watched the now viral clip from last week of J.D. Vance buying donuts in Valdosta, Georgia a dozen times now. Every time I see it pop up, I have to watch it again.

For those unfamiliar, here it is:

A lot has been said about the awkwardness of the interactions the vice-presidential candidate has with the donut shop staff or the lack of any kind of prep or briefing of the food service workers.

Even though the presidential election has effectively devolved into something resembling a sporting event, where half of the fans are cheering the red team no matter what and half are just as enthusiastically cheering for the blue, I think it’s worth remembering the whole point of a presidential campaign. The goal is to prove that you, more than anybody else, are the most capable to lead our country (or to be ready to step in to lead in the case of the vice president).

I haven’t heard anybody analyze the donut video from the standpoint of leadership yet, and I think it’s an important discussion.

The way I see it, there were two ways to use a simple interaction in a donut shop to showcase leadership qualities. J.D. Vance exhibited neither in Georgia.

One leader is a “great decider.” They are the decision maker, the one who helps people know what they want before they even know it themselves. Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, and other similar revolutionary creatives fit into this model.

A great decider is the friend who sits down in a restaurant and orders for the table. He or she knows which appetizers are the best and which should be avoided. They know how hungry everybody is and they order accordingly.

Vance as a decider would have come in swinging, confidently telling the donut clerk “one dozen glazed, one dozen sprinkles, one dozen strawberry please” or something like that. He’d know how many mouths he had to feed in his campaign staff and traveling press corps and would have ensured there was enough variety and quantity for everyone.

The other version of leadership he could have shown is the “great listener.” This is the person who wants to make sure that everybody’s ideas are heard and figures out how to synthesize them into a meaningful action plan which reasonably accommodates everyone.

A great listener would’ve made sure that everybody’s choice got registered. “I have some chocolates, did anybody want a sprinkle too?”

Both forms of leadership can work, but Vance seemed wholly incapable to lead in any sense. He asks an advisor how many to buy, the advisor says “a couple dozen, sir” and Vance proceeds to order “whatever makes sense.”

The people behind the counter have no idea how many people he’s trying to feed, what they like, or how much Vance is willing to spend in that moment, yet he puts the decision entirely on them.

Again, I know our presidential elections are no longer really about assessing who could be the best leader, but if they were, Vance failed that test. Imagine a scenario where Trump is somehow elected again and then is no longer able to serve in a few months (perhaps because of his health, perhaps because he is jailed). That would leave Vance in the most powerful leadership role on the planet.

In that hypothetical scenario, there’s a national emergency that demands urgency. Let’s say a missile is headed for New York City. Would Vance’s response be just do “whatever makes sense?” Should that be comforting?

None of this matters, because, again, politics is just sports now, but also Trump seems to be effectively campaigning with Robert F Kennedy Jr. as his defacto running mate. He “re-truthed” the below image on Truth Social a few days ago and continues to share RFK posts with little mention of Vance these days.

Vance fails the leadership test, whether that’s in a donut shop or the Oval Office. Maybe even Trump realizes that now.

More Buses in Unexpected Places

Earlier this year, I wrote about seeing what appeared to be a former Disney’s Magical Express bus that took people from Orlando Airport to Walt Disney World hotels driving around the streets of Boston. The bus in question was serving as a shuttle replacement for the Red Line subway while work was underway.

All of the evidence seemed to point to the bus that I saw being a former Disney bus (which was actually run by a Florida company called Mears). Well last week, I was in Boston again and the Red Line was shut down again, and guess what I happened to see.

A Mears Connect bus on the streets of Boston (Heath Racela)

After Disney decided to cancel the free Magical Express service, Mears began running the same buses under the name Mears Connect that now charged for airport service. And it seems that somehow a whole fleet of Mears buses ended up coming to Boston to serve as Red Line shuttles.

A Mears Connect bus driving in Boston (Heath Racela)

It was a bit strange seeing a bus that I associate with the palm trees of Florida driving around the historic streets of Boston. It’s hard to tell in these photos, but the buses still have Florida plates too, so they don’t seem to be surplus buses that were sold to a New England charter operator. Rather, they seem to be “snow birding” in Boston for the summer.

A Mears-like bus with “Masters Charter” on the side (Heath Racela)

I saw another one that looked like a Disney/Mears bus from the front but had Masters Charter wrapped on the side. According to their website, Masters Charter provides bus fleets for corporate events, weddings, amusement parks, cruise ship transfers, airports, sports teams, religious groups, employee shuttle services, school functions, university rentals, and emergency evacuations. They have an area code 407 number and appear to be based in or around Orlando.

If I had the time and resources, I would want to dig into this further. Why is the MBTA contracting with one or more Florida coach rental companies? How did these buses get transported from Florida to Boston? How long are they up here? Will they ever go back?

Disney’s Magical Express buses at Orlando Airport in 2016 (Heath Racela)

I have more questions than answers at this point, but after vacationing at Disney a lot when my kids were younger, I instantly recognized that blue and white bus!