Where it all began....

In the 1980's, Enterprise Rent-A-Car started taking donuts to insurance agents as a way to get referrals of people whose car had been in an accident and needed a temporary replacement vehicle. Ask anyone who was with Enterprise during this time and they'll tell you that donuts were the single most important sales tool in their arsenal.

In June of 1987, Dave Willey, a Regional manager at Enterprise, called Allen McNeill, a sales rep at a local St. Louis printing company. Willey told McNeill that his office managers were taking donuts daily to insurance agents and were looking for a way to get custom boxes so that everyone would know all day long that it was Enterprise who brought in the donuts. A design was decided upon and boxes created. Soon after the original boxes were made, other managers throughout the Enterprise system started ordering their own boxes.

By the summer of 1989, McNeill approached Enterprise Corporate about making one donut box design for the entire company. A flyer was made and sent to the 42 manaters coast to coast. When all the orders came in it totaled 218,000 donut boxes! McNeill got permission to put a fictitious name and phone number on the bottom of all the boxes. Soon calls came in inquiring if this was the "donut box company"?

State Farm agents recieved the majority of the boxes from Enterprise and many of their agents called the number on the bottom of the box. In 1990, Bob Denny at State Farm Corporate ordered 100,000 boxes and put an ad in their agent magazine to see what would happen. Within two weeks, the purchasing department had called again with an order for an additional 150,000 donut boxes!

Today, Thanks A Dozen is still going strong. With several different sizing options and even tissues sleeves, Thanks A Dozen remains the authority on the way to use food for your own personal branding. Make sure to keep in touch with us as we continue to develop ways to help you discover the incredible branding power of food.