Dunkin' Donuts (officially shortened to Dunkin' in 2019) is an American-based coffee and fast food chain founded in Massachusetts in 1950. The chain originally focused on donuts, as the name suggests, as well as other baked goods (bagels, muffins, etc.) and breakfast sandwiches. The company gradually shifted focus to coffee from around the Turn of the Millennium to the end of The New '10s, when "Donuts" was dropped from the company's trade name, though they still sell donuts in smaller quantities.

Dunkin' has aired a variety of commercials over the years, dating at least back to The '60s. In The '80s, they introduced a character known as Fred the Baker (played by Michael Vale), who appeared in commercials until the actor retired in 1997. Fred had the catchphrase "time to make the donuts", and his commercials sometimes boasted about the company making fresh donuts more frequently than supermarkets, citing it as a factor in the brand's popularity. After Fred was retired, commercials became largely standalone.

The slogan "America Runs on Dunkin'" was adopted in 2006, around the time of a campaign featuring original songs by They Might Be Giants.

Starting with a Super Bowl Special in 2023, Ben Affleck has been the star of an ongoing ad campaign, after having gone viral in the past for his affinity with the brand, and has been doing commercials alongside other celebrities (including Ice Spice, Ben's wife Jennifer Lopez, and Matt Damon).

Time to trope the donuts:

• Adam Westing: The 2023–present ad campaign starring Ben Affleck as a fictionalized version of himself, where he's portrayed as being a goofy, midlife crisis-stricken actor who massively overestimates his talents in things he's not good at, such as singing and playing football, and stubbornly refuses to listen to any criticism telling him otherwise. Dunkin's 2024 Super Bowl ad also stars Matt Damon as Affleck's supportive but put-upon best friend who clearly wants no involvement in any of Affleck's antics.
• Adjacent to This Complete Breakfast: Naturally appears with Dunkin' Donuts Cereal.
• Black Comedy: The police officer being indifferent to a car crash but shooting a jogger for making him drop his coffee.
• Catchphrase: Fred the Baker has "Time to make the donuts."
• Celebrity Endorsement: Ben Affleck has been the most prominent endorser since 2023. The Filipino division has courted some Asian celebrities, including K-pop boy band ENHYPEN.
• Commercialized Christmas: A commercial with Fred the Baker is set to "'Twas the Night Before Christmas." Tacked on is a short commercial for a Dunkin' Donuts toy truck.
• Crack Defeat: A commercial that normally airs around Halloween has an office costume party. Most of the participants have rather elaborate costumes. (The woman at the front is heavily made up as Cleopatra.) The winner, however, is Steve who's only wearing an arrow-through-the-head headband...and presenting a box of Dunkin' Donuts as a bribe.
• Disguised in Drag: One commercial has Fred at a supermarket, studying his competitor's donuts while hiding his mustache with his finger.
• Donut Mess with a Cop:
  • Averted, ironically, in this commercial. The cop is content with just coffee, but God forbid you accidentally knock it out of his hand.
  • Implied in this 1999 commercial. The cop chases a suspect into a Dunkin' Donuts... where the suspect buys himself breakfast. The cop can also be seen returning to the police car with a bag for himself.
• Faceplanting into Food: One commercial shows Fred nodding off at a dinner party, with his wife explaining that "he's on call day and night" and that his work demands "absolute consistency". Another woman asks if he's a brain surgeon. Just then, Fred falls asleep in his plate of mashed potatoes. He sits back up, muttering, "Time to make the donuts..."
• Food as Bribe:
  • A secretly balding Johnny uses an iced coffee to bribe Theo into keeping the secret.
  • A commercial that normally airs around Halloween has an office costume party. Most of the participants have rather elaborate costumes. (The woman at the front is heavily made up as Cleopatra.) The winner, however, is Steve who's only wearing an arrow-through-the-head headband...and presenting a box of Dunkin' Donuts as a bribe.
• Gem-Encrusted: J-Lo has a diamond-encrusted Dunkin' cup.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Fred gets the angel and devil as he has to choose between getting a decent amount of sleep and making fresh donuts for the morning crowd. At the end, the angel and devil agree that it's worth losing sleep to sell fresh donuts.
• Grandma's Recipe: Muffins and cookies were advertised as a direct competitor. One granny in the former even threatens to sue!
• Granny Classic: The granny that passes Dunkin' Donuts cookies as her own.
• Headless Horseman: A costume worn by a guest at a Halloween party, which the kid points out is not a smart costume choice because the guest can't eat in it.
• Last Resort Takeout: Implied with the granny buying Dunkin' Donuts cookies to save time and passing it off as her own baking.
• Parody Product Placement: The deliberately terrible Dunkaccino commercial in Jack and Jill is Dunkin' Donuts making fun of themselves, complete with Bad "Bad Acting", a gratuitous celebrity cameo from Al Pacino (who is Adam Westing by making shoehorned references to his previous famous roles in a Piss-Take Rap), and a random dance sequence with an unenthused dancer in a Goofy Suit of a coffee cup. After seeing the finished product, Pacino orders all copies of it destroyed.
• Piss-Take Rap: Ben Affleck has an arc of trying to become a rapper and leads the DunKings with Matt Damon and Tom Brady. It's about as awkward as you'd expect.
• Portmanteau: [1] "Is it French or is it Italian? Perhaps Fritalian."
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Rapunzel as she rolls up her hair when breaking up with the prince.
• Recycled Title: Munchkins, Dunkin's name for donut holes, has been repurposed as an Ice Spice-sponsored drink. [2]
• Slogans: America Runs on Dunkin' in the United States since 2006.
• Straight Man: Jack Harlow to Ben Affleck in this commercial.
  Ben: Here's why I know it's right it's cuz there's a voice: "Don't do this, terrible mistake."
  Jack: That might be what you need to hear.
  Ben: No, that's the wrong voice. No, it's—
  Jack: What if it's a voice of reason?
  Ben: Nah, I don't have that voice, believe me.
• Super Bowl Special:
  • Ben Affleck made his official debut with the Drive-Thru commercial, which premiered during the Super Bowl.
  • The following year, Matt Damon joined him in The DunKings.
• Sweet Baker: Fred the Baker is genuinely passionate about making fresh donuts for his customers.
• Take That!: Dunkin' Donuts has taken some indirect potshots at Starbucks, its main coffee competitor, insinuating the latter's gratuitous use of foreign names — even for small, medium, and large — is too much for commoners to handle.
• Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket: This commercial has a customer struggling to understand that "deici" is what the Starbucks expy calls "large" even as the barista tries to say just that. This assumes most customers would be oblivious to the terms being clearly illustrated in the commercial, and that no one would realize that, if nothing else, the varying prices for the different sizes would be an obvious clue to what "large" is called.
• Unwanted Rescue: A variant where the hero tries to rescue someone who refuses to be rescued. Rapunzel is willing to stay in the tower, at least for as long as she has Dunkin' coffee, and breaks up with the prince trying to rescue her.
• Visual Pun: Give your grill the day off. This follows a montage of barbecue grills in leisure because of Dunkin' selling steak and egg sandwiches.