Oh thank the Lord! After a decade and a half of absence, American coffee-and-donuts king Dunkin’ Donuts is on its way back to Beijing – and its first store will be open by the end of January.

The company is being a little hush-hush about specifics, but we hear the first store will be open before Chinese New Year at the Carrefour building in the Tiantongyuan area of Changping.

Next on the list, due to open shortly after CNY, are shops in Shunyi’s Pinnacle Plaza and one in Wangjing. Later a handful of others will be rolled out in Beijing.

The store facade is up in Shunyi and the person who runs DD’s official Weibo account confimred with us that the openings are imminent.

We also heard from one former staffer that they’ve been planning a Beijing launch for quite some time – which makes sense as they announced almost exactly a year ago that a massive roll-out of 1,400 stores (to add to the existing 17 or so) across China was afoot.

For you fresh-off-the-boaters (and anyone who came to Beijing after SARS is still a newbie in my eyes), Beijing had several Dunkin’ Donuts pre-2000, where they were typically paired with their co-franchisee, Baskin Robbins.

But while Baskin’s survived, DD died a slow death at the hands of fickle Beijing consumers who at the time barely drank coffee and would complain about the donuts being too sweet (while knocking back a bottled ice tea with 26 teaspoons of sugar dissolved into it) or too unhealthy for breakfast (as they scarfed down their streetside youtiao deep fried in gutter oil).

Truth be told the franchise sucked back then – their coffee was terrible and the volume of sales was low, which meant the pastry cases were usually lightly dotted with a few stale donuts of the least desirable varieties.

My how times have changed. China is totally into coffee these days and the hoi polloi are a lot less likely to turn up their nose at sweet stuff.

Shanghai has had Dunkin’s for quite a while (seven locations) and it’s not half bad – I make it my patriotic duty as an overweight, pre-diabetic American to patronize it every time I’m down south. And goshdarn it even relative backwaters like Shenyang have them (nine locations). There’s even one in Fushun. Quick: tell me where Fushun is. Right: Nowhere. For shame, Beijing.

For those of you unfamiliar with the brand, think Starbucks, but with better coffee, cheaper prices, and baked goods that don’t remind you of crusty DIY papier-mache projects. Dunkin’ Donuts is the anti-Starbucks for us working stiffs and regular joes who are not there to pose, but to fuel up on two of life’s critical food groups: caffeine and sugar.

So get yourselves ready for the Beijing launch by taking a gander of what’s on offer at the Shanghai stores, which we presume will be the same in Beijing. Sure they do a little “catering to the home team” with some odd flavors and shapes (round not good enough for ya, China?) but there’s enough for the DD traditionalist in all of us.

For instance, while you’ll definitely want to stay far away from the Dry Pork and Seaweed:

there’s still a lot of classics to select from,such as the classic Glazed:

the perfect-for-dunking-in-hot-black-coffee Old Fashioned (though they call it Original in China):

the Chocolate Frosted:

the Boston Kreme:

and the Cinnamon Roll:

Absolutely criminal is the fact that the Blueberry Cake, the king of donuts, has been left off the China menu. Look at this baby and tell me you don’t immediately want to thrust it upon your tastebuds:

In the meantime, we can only hope the franchisee gets it together enough to make it open before Spring Festival. We’ll keep you posted as we hear updates on when and where we Beijingers can expect the shops to open.

Images: Dunkin’ Donuts China, alloveralbany.com