Dunkin' Donuts Looks to Sweet Return to Ponce

Get ready for a food fight.

Dunkin' Brands Group Inc., the parent company to Dunkin' Donuts, plans to open a 2,100 square-foot restaurant at the southwest corner of Ponce de Leon Avenue and Boulevard.

The Canton, Mass.-based sweets and coffee shop, will construct a new building that will replace A+ Financial Services at 682 Boulevard, according to a report in Tomorrow's News Today.

The planned store puts it in a head-to-head combat for Ponce motorists with a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts outlet just a few blocks west on Ponce. In late 2011, the Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins closed its doors in the Midtown Place shopping center only a few hundred yards east on Ponce.

The new location is part of the company's strategy to beef up its presence in metro Atlanta, TNT reported.

Dunkin', which has been in expansion mode globally, has about 50 stores in metro Atlanta. Last summer, Dunkin' opened a new restaurant at the shuttered Cottage Ethiopian Restaurant on Piedmont Avenue in Morningside.

It reported 2012 profit of $108.18 million, or 93 cents per share.

Though rival Starbucks Corp. is larger, having reported 2012 profit of $1.43 billion, or $1.86 per share, Dunkin's quarterly earnings growth year-over-year has soared 196.20 percent compared with Starbucks' 13.10 percent rise.

The Ponce and Boulevard store is to include Dunkin's sister company, Baskin-Robbins, TNT reported.

The news of the new restaurant comes on the heels of much current and planned activity ongoing across the street near the intersection of Ponce and Monroe Drive. Currently, the former Exxon service station at 486 Ponce de Leon is in the process of being replaced by a full-service Shell Food Mart.

Fidelty Bank has plans to move into the vacated bank space at 494 Ponce de Leon that fronts both Ponce and Monroe.

And as Patch reported in January, the Alpharetta-based Shane Investment Property Group is planning to redevelop a roughly 5,500-square-foot commercial space located at 468 Ponce de Leon.