A history of Royals food giveaways

Krispy Kreme (2003-2006)

By the early 2000s, the Royals had been lousy for several seasons, so the team tried to entice fans with the possibility of free doughnuts. In 2003, they had a promotion where any time the Royals had 12 hits in a home game, fans could redeem their ticket the next day at any area Krispy Kreme for a dozen free donuts.

The 2003 team turned out to be…good. Not great, but good enough to stay in contention most of the year. As the team began to draw crowds, they would go nuts when the team reached 11 hits in a game, chanting “WE WANT DONUTS! WE WANT DONUTS!”

So the Royals were better than expected, in a high-offense era, and were drawing bigger crowds than usual. The result was a lot of free donuts being dispersed. A Krispy Kreme spokesperson revealed the company was a bit caught off guard.

“We had no idea the Royals would end up being so successful this year. … It’s been like a real wildfire — it’s caught on more than we could have ever imagined.”

The 2003 Royals had 27 home games with at least a dozen hits, the second-most in club history (only the 2000 team would have been worse for Krispy Kreme). The redemption rate was only around 1 percent, but there were only three Krispy Kreme locations in town at the time, leading to long lines.

After the 2006 season, the Krispy Kreme promotion was discontinued:

[Dan Glass] said the dough-nut maker’s corporate philosophy had changed and the company no longer wanted to continue the promotion. But Glass quipped the good news is, “We will all lose a lot of weight.” And he joked Krispy Kreme execs were so startled by the team’s improvements in the second half of last season that they were worried about the frequency of this year’s giveway if the hit total wasn’t raised to 24 for a dozen.

The team’s improvements? That 2006 team lost 100 games! Imagine if the Royals had actually become good during that era! Maybe Krispy Kreme was paying Angel Berroa to tank games?

Panera (2007)

Krispy Kreme was out, but the next year, Panera stepped in to replace them with a similar promotion. If the Royals got 13 hits in a home game, fans could redeem the ticket for 13 free bagels. I guess they reasoned 13 hits is a harder goal for the team to reach than 12 hits.

On April 20, the Royals reached the mark in a win over the Twins. Royals fans flooded Panera cafes the next day to get their bagels. Panera was overwhelmed. As Jeffery Flanagan wrote in the Star on April 29, 2007, over 8,500 fans tried to redeem their tickets for bagels. Once was enough for Panera, they wanted out of the deal.

“We’re definitely pulling the plug,” said Eric Cole, vice president of operations for the Kansas City Panera franchises…

“It was just too much,” Cole said. “We were led to believe that there would be about a 15 percent redemption rate, so we figured at most it would be 20 percent. I think it wound up being about 26.7 percent from that one game. It takes about six minutes to prepare a bagel the way we want to. So we just had situations where we couldn’t do it at certain stores for the number of fans who wanted them.”

Frank Williams wrote about the bagel blunder and what workers had to go through to meet the demand.

Every bread made at any of the Kansas City area Paneras (including Wichita, Lawrence, Topeka, Manhattan, and St. Joe’s) came from a decades old levain called the Mother Bread. The aforementioned bagels are mixed one day in KC, rise in a truck and in walk-in coolers on the second day, and are baked the third day. Needless to say, a sharp rise in demand can cause problems for this lengthy supply chain.

In hindsight, it seems like an overly generous promotion. Maybe offer a couple of bagels? A free sandwich? I don’t even know what I would do with 13 bagels, and I have three boys who eat a lot of food.

The Royals reached the 13-hit mark in 13 more home games that season, which could have put Panera out of business for good.

Papa John’s (2016-2018)

In 2016, the Royals had a deal with Papa John’s where if the team scored five or more runs, fans could enter a coupon to get 50 percent off a pizza the next day. I guess high-carb foods are the only thing the Royals can give away. MLB had a league-wide promotion as well, where fans could get 40 percent off a pizza if any player hit a grand slam.

But both promotions were abruptly ended in the middle of the 2018 season due to Papa John’s founder John Schnatter.

After news of Schnatter’s use of the N-word during a training call, Major League Baseball indefinitely suspended its Papa Slam promotion with Papa John’s, Yahoo Sports reported.

Oh yea, that. The Royals lost their appetite for Papa John’s as well, and quickly cut the promotion.

McDonald’s (2017-2019) and Subway (2018)

I don’t even remember these promotions, but I stumbled upon them in an article about the Papa John’s promotion. Apparently in 2017, McDonald’s also had a promotion where, if the Royals turned a double play, you could get $1 off a McDouble. The next year they made it more lucrative by making it so any double play would allow fans to “buy one, get one” on any sandwich on the menu the next day. In 2019, it was limited to just Egg McMuffins.

Subway also had a promotion around that time. In 2018, when the Royals collected nine hits in a home game, fans could get a free 6-inch sub sandwich when they purchase a 30-ounce drink. You can see the promotions getting a bit smarter. Its okay to lower the threshold a bit if you make the giveaway less generous. And it helps to make the customer buy something. The Royals reached the nine-hit mark in 36 home games, but I can’t find any accounts of area Subways being overwhelmed by ravenous Royals fans.

The Royals may not always get the win, but at least they are finding ways to feed you.