This article appeared on The Age’s website this evening.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/burger-chain-set-up-franchisee-for-failure-court-told-20140331-35u0b.html
Now we aren’t for one moment pretending this is about McDonald’s, but it is an insight into how franchise operations treat franchisees from time to time.
The Tecoma situation is interesting. In late 2012 McDonald’s used a very successful franchisee to spin the benefits of the Tecoma store on the ABC’s 7:30 Report. The franchisee in question had quite a few stores and was described as “McDonald’s royalty” It was assumed by the community and the media that this franchisee would take on Tecoma.
Jump ahead to 2/3/13 when 3000 people marched from Belgrave to Tecoma in opposition to the store the story went from a local one to an international one. CNN covered the story and Tecoma’s cause was tweeted to 10.5 million followers. McDonald’s all of a sudden had a PR disaster blowing up in their face with no control over the outrage they were receiving. That very week McDonald’s announced to the press that they had a “new” franchisee and the original one was never part of the picture. (was he spooked? We’ll never know) They painted the new guy as a local (he wasn’t) and we subsequently found out he was a much smaller franchisee. We were told by McDonald’s insiders and one or two franchisees that Tecoma was going to be an issue for the corporation a “poison chalice” so to speak.
Since then McDonald’s have done everything in their power including going to the Supreme Court in an attempt to silence a vey vocal community. It’s obvious to most that in time the store will fail. It will have no local support, they will open with no fanfare and at some point in the future they will close without saying a word. It’s happened before in places like Lygon Street Carlton. And when asked what went wrong, they won’t say “we got it wrong” they will lay the blame at the feet of the franchisee.
In late 2012 a McDonald’s store was robbed at gunpoint (Mulgrave) The media reported that many of the staff were under 18 and working after midnight when the robbery took place. When asked on radio the PR hack for McDonald’s said it was against company guidelines to have kids under 18 work after midnight. And when asked why they did it…….they simply blamed the franchisee.
