Los Angeles County
Biographies
VERNE
H. WINCHELL, JR.
Verne
H. Winchell’s fabulous success story brings to mind what Thomas Edison once
said, “I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my
inventions come by accident; they came by work.” Mr. Winchell started working, as a shoeshine
boy and a Post Advocate newspaper carrier after school in Alhambra, when he was
nine years old; he is now the president of Winchell Donut House, Inc., of which
there are approximately one hundred shops operating all over southern
California and as far east as Denver, Colorado, grossing between five and six
million dollars in 1961.
Born
in Bloomington, Illinois, on October 30, 1915, Mr. Winchell is the son of Verne
and Marie (Stautz) Winchell. His father was a mail carrier and later was
in the coin machine business with Mr. Winchell.
The family came to Alhambra in 1924, and young Verne attended Park Elementary
School in Alhambra, graduating from Alhambra High School in 1933, and attended
Pasadena Junior College for one year. He
also took a business course at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles.
After
completing his schooling, Mr. Winchell worked in the office of General Motors
for one year, and in 1937 started a business that he had been thinking about
and planning during his school days, the coin machine business – juke boxes and
games. By 1949 he had machines all over
southern California.
Enjoying
a doughnut and coffee one day, Mr. Winchell conceived the idea of opening a
doughnut shop, a new style shop where customers could drive in and see
doughnuts made fresh and purchase them hot.
He designed a building for this purpose, experimented with mixes and
frostings, and in 1948 in Temple City, California, Winchell’s Donut House
served its first doughnut. This original
shop, still in operation, succeeded from the very beginning beyond the fondest
expectations. By 1957 thirty-seven shops
were in operation, and more were under construction; in 1961 there were one
hundred three shops, and Mr. Winchell intends to go nation-wide with his
product. In January, 1962, a public
issue of stock was offered in Winchell Donut House, Inc. This issue was very successful, being
oversubscribed and sold out the first day.
He also has an interest in five taco shops. In 1951 a warehouse was opened in South Gate
to enable supplies to be bought in great qualities. Mr. Winchell now owns six acres at Durfee and Peck Road in El Monte for a new plant. Mr. Winchell, who plays an active role in every
phase of the company’s operation, feels that his choice of executives to run
the various departments of the business, as well as the work of his brother,
Robert Winchell, as vice-president and developer of the San Fernando operation,
are vital factors in the business’ phenomenal success. Another important factor is the supervised
franchise basis on which the shops are operated. From the very first careful attention was
given to formulas, ingredients, and methods of service, to make sure that every
doughnut and every cup of coffee served is of the very finest quality.
Mr.
Winchell now makes a hobby, and a very lucrative one at that, of owning race
horses. For years during his spare time
he went to the races loving the animals and the sport. In 1958 he purchased his first race horse,
Ronnie’s Baby, from the Desilu Stable, partly because
of his great interest in horses, and partly to see if he could make a success
of this new venture. Ronnie’s Baby was
no winner, neither were the next few horses.
Mr. Winchell claimed, but finally, while Mr. Winchell was on a trip to
Europe, one of his horses, Mince All, won a race. While Mr. Winchell was on another vacation,
to Hawaii, his Mr. Eiffel won the Del Mar Derby. He later had the pleasure of watching Mr.
Eiffel win the Golden Gate Derby, the same day that another of his horses,
Predacious, was a winter in an earlier race.
Once Mr. Winchell had made a success of running claiming horses, he
decided to try his luck at buying yearlings.
One he named Mr. America, and expected great things of him. Mr. America was a perfectly conformed animal
and showed promise from the very beginning of becoming an all-time great, but
unfortunately he met with an untimely end on July 8, 1961, in the $100,000
Hollywood Derby, a race in which he was just making a move for a run to the
wire when he broke a leg so badly it was necessary to destroy him. Previous to this he had won the $30,000
Argonaut Stakes and had earned $56,000 in nine starts with a future that was
just beginning. This sad experience gave
Mr. Winchell’s racing career a setback, but he was fortunate to have Donut
King, a promising son of Determine, the 1954 Kentucky Derby winner. Before September of 1961, Donut King had run
nine races and won three; he ran the fastest time run by a two-year-old in
California in 1961. By September, 1961,
Mr. Winchell had already turned down offers of two hundred thousand dollars for
the horse he had bought for sixteen thousand.
Since that date, Donut King ran third in the Del Mar Futurity, ran
fourth in the $50,000 Cowden Stakes at New York’s Aqueduct Track, and won one
hundred forty-six thousand dollars in the New York Champagne Stakes. At the Garden State trials in New Jersey,
Donut King won by nine lengths receiving a slight
injury which interrupted his training.
However, a week later he came in second in the Garden State Stakes, the
race that decided the two-year-old championship, bringing his winnings for the
year to two hundred forty-nine thousand dollars. For the season, he has been ranked the best
two-year-old horse in California and fourth in the nation.
Mr.
Winchell’s daughter, Mrs. Richard (Linda Rae) Kirk, lives in Duarte. His son, Richard, has just graduated from
Temple City High School and is now associated with the Winchell Donut business
as an operator of the Alhambra store.
A
fine example of what can be achieved by hard work, Mr. Winchell, who himself
has been nicknamed “the Donut King,” always seems to be able to find a new
venture to make a success of.
Transcribed
by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Historical Volume &
Reference Works Including Alhambra, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel &
Temple City, by Robert P. Studer, Pages 429-432,
Historical Publ., Los Angeles, California.
1962.
© 2012 V.
Gerald Iaquinta.
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