Concern for his 400 employees prompted a franchisee to close 23 Dunkin' Donuts in West Bay and South County at midmorning Thursday as the nor'easter cranked into high gear and conditions deteriorated.

WARWICK — This is how Rhode Island knows the weather is really, really bad.

It took a bomb cyclone nor'easter to close nearly two dozen Dunkin' Donuts stores late Thursday morning.

Rob Batista, who is the franchisee of 23 stores with two brothers and a brother-in-law, said that they decided to close their stores by 11 a.m. after seeing weather reports of snow falling at a rate of 2 to 3 inches an hour.

About 400 employees work at the Batista-Amarul franchisee stores in East Greenwich, Narragansett, North Kingstown, South Kingstown and Warwick — essentially, 13 percent of the Dunkin' Donuts in Rhode Island. And Batista said they wanted to keep their employees safe.

The stores opened at 5 a.m. and filled quickly with regular customers, emergency crews and drivers of city plows and sanding trucks. Even iced coffee — Batista says Rhode Island was the pioneer for Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee — was a brisk seller.

But as light snow turned to sheets of wind-driven snow and whiteout conditions, the Dunkin' Donuts stores made the tough, and rare, call. Nearly all of their employees had come in to work, despite the weather, Batista said, but the conditions were turning grim.

"We have literally tried to stay open as long as possible for the city plows," Batista said, at the store in Hoxsie Four Corners.

Tomorrow is another day, but the below-zero temperatures had Batista and his family concerned about frozen pipes. They hope to have the coffee on, with time to make the doughnuts, before sunrise Friday.

— amilkovi@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @AmandaMilkovits