New Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin-Robbins slated for Loves Park

April 11th, 2008 at 05:18pm Deborah Austin

Rinku Patel plans to open her fourth local Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin-Robbins store on April 22 or 23 — about five days before the due date for the birth of her second child. She already has a two-year-old son. This juxtaposition does not seem to faze her a bit.

“I’m not the kind of person who can sit at home,” she told me on April 11. “With my first pregnancy I worked till the day I had to go to the hospital.”

Equipment is being set up now for the opening of Patel’s latest store, at 6747 Broadcast Parkway in Loves Park, in a new building across from Peak Sports Club. Rinku Patel and her husband Chirag Patel are owners and franchisees for Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin-Robbins for the Rockford area.

Their other three locations opened in 2003 — at 2542 S. Alpine Road and 3511 E. State St., Rockford and 1550 E. Riverside Blvd., Loves Park — all in previously built stores that had been closed.

They now plan to close the East State Street store on April 30, and open in a different place in downtown Rockford; that location still is under negotiation. 

The Patels moved to the Rockford area from Chicago when they purchased the local franchise.  It was their first time owning a Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin-Robbins, but the business is nothing new to Rinku Patel.  Her parents owned some Dunkin’ Donuts stores in the Chicago area, and she spent many years helping out in the family business.

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