A hole in the national psyche, a yearning for community, an addiction to sugar, a triumph of marketing – Ireland has competing explanations for the great Krispy Kreme doughnut rush.

Something has impelled thousands of people to besiege the US doughnut chain’s first outpost in Ireland, with traffic jams snaking to the north-west Dublin store, but nobody is quite sure what is behind it.

Hundreds queued overnight for the launch on 26 September and the throngs have kept coming. An all-night cacophony of honking horns and a carnival-like atmosphere at the drive-in has forced managers to shut the doors from 11.30pm until dawn to give the neighbourhood of Blanchardstown some respite.

Speaking on Tuesday lunchtime as customers streamed past, Alex Drysdale, Krispy Kreme’s Ireland country director, said: “It’s been unprecedented. We expected to be popular, just not this popular.”

Nudging her Citroën towards the drive-in kiosk, Una, who declined to give her last name, said her children had begged her to take them. “They’re saying everyone at school is getting them. It’s been bonkers, it’s just mad. I don’t understand it. It’s as if we’ve never seen a doughnut before,” she said.

Ireland has been munching doughnuts since long before the Dunkin’ Donuts franchises appeared in the 1990s. Smaller stores with names such as the Rolling Donut, Aungier Danger and Offbeat Donuts have proliferated in recent years, prompting declarations of “peak doughnut” in 2017.

Crème de la Kreme: doughnuts with sprinkles, chocolate, fudge and strawberry toppings Photograph: Linda Nylind/Guardian

Then Krispy Kreme landed and the real craze started.

Ramona, carting two boxes of doughnuts to her car, said: “It’s my fourth time. They’re too sweet. I can’t stop. Don’t print my last name. It’s too embarrassing.”

Inside the US-style diner, customers lined up at the counter and pressed their noses to a window behind which trundled trays of freshly made, warm glazed doughnuts. A Krispy Kreme employee handed out free doughnuts – one per person – while people waited. “Taste that and tell me it’s not good,” he said, grinning.

Options include Dublin sprinkles – chocolate icing with green sprinkles – but they were being outsold by “strawberries and kreme” and a Nutella variety. A “creation corner” lets visitors customise their doughnuts, the first such innovation in the chain, said Drysdale.

Saoirse Turley, 19, a childcare student, sat in a booth eating a glazed doughnut, one of 24 she had just bought. “I’d be scared of eating all of them. I’m bringing them back to my family,” she said, adding that she had tried Krispy Kremes before on trips to Dubai, Boston and Los Angeles. “Wherever you go, they’re tasty.”

Her friend Jenny Repishti, 20, reckoned the novelty of a drive-in was luring the crowds. “It’s kind of new for Irish people,” she said.

The scramble has bemused Americans – the New York Post published a video of honking cars – and inspired colourful headlines: “Night of the living fed: Krispy Kreme after dark.”

After a quick baking and frying process, Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnuts roll out with their famous shiny sugar coating. Photograph: Steve Exum/Getty Images

Radio phone-ins have buzzed with commentary as well as doughnut recipes for those who cannot make it to north-west Dublin. Newspapers have given potted histories of doughnuts, starting with the 18th-century Dutch settlers who brought olykoeks (oily cakes) to America.

Krispy Kreme has more than 1,000 outlets worldwide, including approximately 130 in the UK. It is a safe bet that it will soon open more outlets across Ireland.

Three business students from the Institute of Technology, Blanchardstown, debated the phenomenon while working their way through a box of doughnuts.

Megan McGuinness, 22, said: “It’s the first one in Ireland and everyone wants to experience it. It’s the age of social media and kind of the way society is. They don’t want to miss out on anything. If you’re not participating, you’re missing out.”

Her friend Evan Clinton agreed: “It’s about being part of something, having the picture, posting it. They made it into a prestige thing.”

Ian Bonnie, 22, was not swept up in the excitement. “I’d queue for maybe 15 minutes, not for two or three hours. I don’t like doughnuts that much,” he said.

Carl Kinsella, a columnist for the news website Joe.ie, said Krispy Kreme had landed in much the same way as the monolith came to the apes in the opening scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey. “And we’ve reacted exactly the same way that the apes did. By freaking the hell out,” he said.

Centuries of colonisation and privation could be driving it, he suggested. “Maybe after so long spent under those jagged, crushing yokes of imperial Britain and then the Catholic church, we have so much pent-up rage and frustration and hunger that it behooves us to converge upon our first 24-hour doughnut drive-through and slam the shit out of our horns until they feed us tasty, soft, sugary, doughy doughnuts into our grateful mouths.”