Darryl R. Marsch has served as senior vice president and general counsel for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts since September 2008 and as corporate secretary since January 2011. Marsch joined Krispy Kreme in May 2007 as vice president and associate general counsel. Prior to that, he was senior counsel for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. from November 1998 to May 2007. From September 1991 to October 1998, Marsch was an associate at Jones Day in Washington, D.C.
Born in New Braunfels, Texas, Marsch is a 1991 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, and he earned his undergraduate degree in 1987 from the University of Texas where he was Phi Beta Kappa.
Marsch has served on the board of directors of the Autism Society of North Carolina since 2007. He served on the board of directors of the Arts Based Elementary School, a charter school in Winston-Salem, N.C., from 2003 to 2007.
He lives in Winston-Salem with his wife and son. He is a big fan of Bobby Flay and cooking. In 2009, he had two recipes in the top 10 of a Bobby Flay cooking contest on Food Network.com: a grilled sockeye salmon with a blackberry merlot lacquer with grilled asparagus and a morel-chardonnay vinaigrette, and chipotle spiced pear and white wine mussels.
Lately, he is obsessed with P90X, an extreme fitness training program, and he's a Formula 1 fan who cheers for Team McLaren Mercedes.
Describe your department and your role in it.
I am the general counsel and secretary as well as a senior vice president. I serve on the senior management team and report to the CEO. We have three attorneys in our department, a legal assistant and an administrative support person. We all do a little bit of everything, but the other two attorneys try to concentrate more in real estate and employment law.
Your department is relatively small in a company with complex matters, particularly on franchise matters. How do you cope?
Being a small department means that we get our hands dirty. We all know the different matters that we have worked on and benefit from helping each other by sharing experience. We also have excellent outside counsel with whom we build long-lasting relationships. I think that is a key to our success as a department.
Our counsel is vested in our company's success and understands our business from a historical, strategic and personal perspective. They know that they are not one reverse auction away from losing us as a client.
I think that kind of attorney-client relationship—one where the client is just another vendor—is very short-sighted and unhealthy. Unfortunately, it seems to be the view that consultants and corporate counsel associations advocate. We think that we get much better value from our attorneys by having long-term relationships built on mutual trust.
