Quesada Mexican Grill: just another over-hyped franchise pump-and-dump development deal?

Let me get this straight: based on 3 years of franchising experience, they’re going to go from 15 to 300 in 5 years? [20 times the size]

Franchisors have never been shy about risking other-peoples’-money.

Quesada President Tom O’Neill in QSR magazine called Canadian Mexican Brand Plans to Hit 300 Units in 5 Years:

The company expects to open about 300 franchised restaurants in the next five years. “Our game plan,” says O’Neill, “is to double in
 size every 12 months.”

Double every 12 months? Really? Anybody’s business doubling for 2 years in a row nowadays? And the risk to every franchisee when the franchisor spins out of control?

• Brutal…all equity gone.

This couldn’t be another pump-and-dump deal that leaves the area developers and their franchisees holding the bag just like Krispy Kreme…Could it? See Burnt to a Crisp on WikidFranchise.org.

Canada Franchise AssociationListing

Quesada Franchising of Canada Corp.
Eat More Burritos
Franchise Fee: $20K
Startup Capital Required: $60K-$75K
Investment Required: $152K-$242K
Available Territories: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island
Training: 2 weeks
Franchise Units Canada: 11
Corporate Units Canada: 4
In Business Since: 2004
Franchising Since: 2010
CFA Member Since: 2010

Source

The franchisee is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends.

Being sold out is the rule not the exception in all legal, consulting and association representation.

Quote:

The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.

– Norm Chomsky 1928 -

Numbing the senses by monotonously repeating an assertion is a key element in utilizing mind control techniques.

Franchising is more successful than independent business. (meme)

A big lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason.

Quote:

. . . well publicized facts are always the bane to the mind controllers.

Such is the Pavlovian device, repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity of communicating dissent and opposition. This is the simple formula for political conditioning of the masses.

The flight from study and awareness is much too common in a world that throws too many confusing pictures to the individual. For the sake of our democracy, based on freedom and individualism, we have to bring ourselves back to study again and again. Otherwise, we can become easy victims of a well-planned verbal attack on our minds and our consciences.

– Dr. Joost A. M. Meerloo 1903 – 1976

Simply being exposed to the claim of low risk/high success can influence you to buy a poo-filled franchise

Communications designed to persuade mislead and damage you using untruths and half-truths is called propaganda.

Social psychologists define something called priming: unconscious memories influence your behavior. Sometimes fo a very long time. Through repetition (a form of brainwashing).

Franchising trade magazines and trade shows influences potential franchisees to see franchising (in relation to independent business) as lower risk and higher success. Banks write their booklets in a very pro-franchise manner. McDonald’s success and its use as a bell weather (“the McDonald’s of the poo-collection industry”) primes candidates to attribute success where none exists.

Neither of these “truths” is true but that’s irrelevant. By the time the candidate franchisee is looking the low risk/high success bias is part of their DNA. They’ve created a stereotype.

As the scientifically-based research indicates, just looking at words associated with either youth or old age influence how you behave.

What kind of chance do you think you have at a trade show or a franchisor’s open house when every tiny detail is controlled for a positive sales effort? No one’s brain is very good at defending against these extremely powerful persuasion trick and traps. The technology of franchising is the science of neutralizing your defenses and then when the financial loss happens, re-assigning blame from these techniques to you (ie. On Cooling the Mark Out).

–BBC Replicates Bargh’s Famous Priming Study at The Situationist, John Bargh

Sunshine is the best disinfectant — including franchising disputes.

The franchising industry (legal bar, banking, franchisor, suppliers) is highly organized.

The franchise bar reigns supreme not just intellectually but on a tightly-controlled cash flow basis. Variation from the established social norms are not tolerated. Everyone knows their place.

An interesting article by Jennifer Dolman of Osler LLP about their clients’ dreams:  Who’s the fairest franchise party of all?

Author:

Jennifer Dolman is a litigation partner with Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in Toronto. A frequent speaker and writer on franchise law, Jennifer has particular expertise representing franchisors on franchise disputes. She was named Toronto Franchise Lawyer of the Year by The Best Lawyers in Canada 2012 and a Franchise Times Legal Eagle 2012. Jennifer can be reached at jdolman@osler.com or  (416) 862-5911.

Advice: Have us fight for you in the shadows, and not in the light of day (ie. an ON  Court of law).

– quote by  by Justice Lewis Brandeis 1856 – 1941

There are only two fatherlands in the world:…

…that of the exploited and that of the exploiters.

Looking for a “strong” franchise leader?

Words I have heard franchisors say:

Blood alone moves the wheels of history.

The truth is that men are tired of liberty.

The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people.

The mass, whether it be a crowd or an army, is vile.

– Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) Italian politician, advertising executive/communicator

Happy Father’s Day

The real violence exerted by propaganda, Thomas Merton

Quote:

The real violence exerted by propaganda is this: by means of apparent truth and apparent reason, it induces us to surrender our freedom and self-possession. It predetermines us to certain conclusions, and does so in such a way that we imagine that we are fully free in reaching them by our own judgment and our own thought. Propaganda makes up our mind for us, but in such a way that it leaves us the sense of pride and satisfaction of men who have made up their own minds. And, in the last analysis, propaganda achieves this effect because we want it to.

This is one of the few real pleasures left to modern man: this illusion that he is thinking for himself when, in fact, someone else is doing his thinking for him.

And this someone else is not a personal authority, the great mind of a genial thinker, it is the mass mind, the general “they,” the anonymous whole. One is left, therefore, not only with the sense that one has thought things out for himself, but that he has also reached the correct answer without difficulty – the answer which is shown to be correct because it is the answer of everybody. Since it is at once my answer and the answer of everybody, how should I resist it?

– Thomas Merton 1915 -1968

We all believe many things that are obviously untrue.

The most destructive untruth is how easy it is to make money.

They do not love each other because they do not love themselves.

– Kurt Vonnegut 1922 – 2007

What is the purpose of an Advisory Council?

It is a very useful surveillance tool.

It an extremely cost-effective way to:

• confuse and distract,
• identify monitor and delete independent thinkers (ie. trouble-makers),
• distract by talking about everything but $ (If it doesn’t jingle, it doesn’t count),
• encourage individual and group despair, passivity and division,
• “vampirize” the genuine credibility of franchisee members,
• use a Good cop/Bad cop trick to avoid cash flow issues,
• create a paper trail that is false (control of minutes, broadcast emails), and
• debase, degrade and whore-out language and pervert/invert reality via lies and bullshit.

These elite-based techniques are centuries old and have been effective.

With some creativity, email and smart phones, the 1% is frozen in fear.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

Franchising is a total institution ruled by fear:

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

Solitude and acceptance are the answer.

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

I like being myself. Myself and nasty.

– Aldous Huxley 1894 – 1963