You run Krispy Kreme and you hear there’s a college student in Minnesota who drives four hours every Saturday to buy up to 100 boxes of your doughnuts and resell them to his fellow students.

What do you do?

Do you applaud him, interview him, write about him, maybe offer him a job?

Do you look into opening stores in the town where this guy goes to school?

Do you encourage your franchisees to offer a delivery option to people who don’t have time to get to a store?

Think, man, how would you leverage this to get some great publicity and increase your sales?

Maybe you saw the same news story I saw. The one with the headline, “Krispy Kreme orders Minnesota student who bought, resold doughnuts to ‘shut down operations'”

Yeah, that’s what they did.

This kid reminds me of myself in elementary school. I bought candy and gum at the 7-11 and re-sold it to the other kids. I had a nice little business going. So I felt for this guy.

He wasn’t doing anything wrong. But, someone at corporate thought what he was doing might be a liability for the company, so, right or wrong, they told him to stop.

But that’s not the whole story. The best part of this story is what happened next.

He didn’t call a lawyer. He didn’t complain to the government about restraint of trade. He didn’t hold a protest march and cry victim.

No. He shut down his business.

I don’t know if he felt he couldn’t fight the company or that it just wasn’t worth it but, just like that, he was out of business.

But not for long.

His posted this on social media:

“Life happens, and it could be a sign that something else is meant to be. Appreciate everyone’s love and support to make this happen, couldn’t have done it without you all.”

And then he encouraged everyone to stay tuned because he might “have another entrepreneurial adventure you will be interested in”.

I love this young man’s attitude. And I can’t wait to see what’s he does next.