Tim Hortons’ franchisees fancied themselves above all other franchise systems renters.

Even McDonald’s.

Maybe they never met Ray? Or his loyal Canadian subordinate, George?

 

Boom, Like That

I’m going to San Bernardino ring-a-ding-ding

Milkshake mixers that’s my thing now

These guys bought a heap of my stuff

And I gotta see a good thing sure enough now

 

Oh my name is not Crock, that’s Kroc with a K

Like crocodile but not spelled that way now

It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat

Kroc-style… Boom! like that

 

Folks line up all down the street

Now I am seeing this girl devour her meat now

And then I get it Wham! as clear as day

My pulse begins to hammer then I hear a voice say:

 

These boys have got this down ought to be one of these in every town

These boys have got the touch It’s clean as a whistle and it don’t cost much

Wham! Bam! You don’t wait long, shake, fries, patty you’re gone

How about that friendly name, heck, every little thing ought to stay the same

 

Or my name is not Crock, that’s Kroc with a K

Like crocodile but not spelled that way now

It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat

Dog eat dog, rat eat rat now

Oh it’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat

Kroc-style… Boom! like that

 

You gentlemen ought to expand

You’re gonna need a helping hand now

So gentlemen well what about me?

We’ll make a little business history now

 

Oh my name’s not Crock, you can call me Ray

Like crocodile but not spelled that way now

It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat

Kroc-style… Boom! like that

 

Well we’ll build it up and I buy ’em out

But man they made me grind it out now

They open up a new place flippin’ meat

So I do too, right across the street

 

I got the name but I need the town, sell em’ in the end and it all shuts down

Sometimes you gotta be an S.O.B. you wanna make a dream reality

Competition sent em south, if they’re gonna drown put a hose in their mouth

Do not pass “Go”, go straight to hell

I smell that meat hook smell

 

Oh my name is not Crock, that’s Kroc with a K

Like crocodile but not spelled that way now

Ohh it’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat

It’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat

Ohh it’s dog eat dog, rat eat rat

Kroc-style… Boom! like that

I smell that meat hook smell

 

 

Information is much, much more valuable to franchisees than any franchise law will ever be.

Start the dialogue, record the franchisor’s every move and retain that information through successive ownership changes.

Start educating  your members in the two businesses they run: the store and the franchise relationship.

I started WikiFranchise.org in Feb 2009. I keep it open although most wikis are closely held.

Those with a greater command of the information, wins every time.

• weblog
• smart phones
• wikis

 

7-Eleven (version Australia) and Big Franchising: conspiracies of fraud, extortion and theft.

I have defined Big Franchising and the role of industry enablers elsewhere.

Click here to watch a 45 minute expose called 7-Eleven: The Price of Convenience.

Modern franchising runs identically, internationally, on all countries sharing a British Common law heritage.

The highest levels of national government known full-well for decades that wage theft is largely responsible for the extraordinary ROI that is achieved by franchisors such as Mr. Withers and Ms. Barlow.

• see Immigrants as prey on WikiFranchise.org.

Cross-posted on WikiFranchise.org.

Welcome to the Pie Face case study in financial engineering: debt- and franchisee-destruction mode.

Modern franchising purges itself of unwanted legal obligations: debt and franchisee life savings.

It is instructive to see this ostensible “failure” in slow-motion.

Articles so far (updated on Jan 21, 2015):

• Bakery franchise Pie Face in administration
• How Pie Face cooked its own goose
• More Pie Face stores to close, vast majority are unprofitable: franchisee
• ‘Not fair play’: franchisees uninvited to Pie Face meeting
• Pie Face goes into administration
• Pie Face hit with second lawsuit in the US
• Pie Face seeking rent cuts
• Pie Face Suddenly Closes Nearly All Its NYC Locations
• Pie Face under attack as disgruntled builder sues US arm over unpaid bills and receivers appointed
• Unprofitable Pie Face traded while insolvent: creditors’ report
• “I’ve suffered $1 million in losses”: Pie Face franchisee tells all
• Pie Face to open its second outlet in the UAE

Analogy: Modern franchising is the operating system software (a technology). The cute logos are simply the different software applications  that run on this extremely sophisticated operation system. There is merit in not revealing this code (eg. may hinder “cooling out the marks“)

Australia, United States, Canada, Great Britain, India, UAE…it’s all the same common law (contract law technology/architecture).

Keep an eye on WikiFranchise.org’s archive of articles on Pie Face (click here)

Founders Wayne Homschek and Betty Fong at a Pie Face in Sydney’s Bondi Junction in the early days. Picture: Troy Bendeich Source: News Corp Australia

Intentional Insolvency: While it is revealed in the report that Mr Homschek probably has no personal assets in Australia, the Pie Face founder and his wife have now put forward a deal to seize back control of the group from voluntary administrators with the backing of TCA and a fresh capital raising on Wall Street.

That proposal will be put to creditors at a meeting slated for tomorrow in Sydney. The administrators have recommended creditors vote in favour of the proposal by Mr Homschek.

I would never want to stand in the way of someone buying a franchise.

Everyone’s got to learn.

Because if I told you about franchising, you would not believe me.

A boat picked me up –exhausted from fatigue –and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the memory of its horror. Those who drew me on board were my old mates and dally companions –but they knew me no more than they would have known a traveller from the spirit-land. My hair, which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. They say too that the whole expression of my countenance had changed. I told them my story –they did not believe it. I now tell it to you –and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden. A Descent Into the Maelstrom, Edgar Allan Poe, 1841

Franchising is processed as if it were a prison.

Phil Zimbardo says evil comes from hierarchy.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

• Franchising harms people, over time by both sides (see Clay/Prisoner 416 and mock guard talk: start at 2:46). No regret, guilt. Only after upon reflection.
• Prisoner 8612 @ 1:36 (after 36 hours ‘incarceration”)
• Let me in on some knowledge…I know you’re a nice guy (You don’t know that).
• People didn’t say anything.
• Prisoner 819 did a bad thing… I have to prove I’m not a bad prisoner.
• The situation degrades over time.
• How program dissenters are treated by peers and guards (one sign of resistance: Prisoner 416). The guards go crazy. Not a hero but a troublemaker.
• The Stanford Prison Experiment Slide Show

Problems with authority. Breaks from reality. Damaged feeling function. Lack of trust. Anger. Barrenness.

What do you think they chose? Most elected to keep their blanket and let their fellow prisoner suffer in solitary all night.

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

Could franchise bankers also act as gangsters?

Are Canadian franchise bankers capable of engaging in “cartel-style anticompetitive corruption” in their $100-billion sales per year marketplace?

Every current or former Canadian franchisee who has had a Canada Small Business Financing loan may want to ask themselves some questions. My posts at  FranchiseBanker.ca (specifically: Banker “everybody is doing it” corruption admitted in the LIBOR scandal) might help frame your thoughts.

Without the Canada Small Business Financing program, many fewer deadbeat franchises would have been sold in the last 20 years.

Industry Canada asked me to jot down my concerns a few years ago.

Franchising Opportunism, a 20 page non-technical paper,  was the result.

Any form of leadership may gradually turn into dictatorship.

Thinking of the recent challenges faced by a specific franchisor.

Quote:

Being a leader, carrying great power and responsibility for other people’s lives, is a monumental test for the human psyche. The weak leader is the man who cannot meet it, who simply abdicates his responsibility. The dictator is the man who replaces the existing standards of justice and morality by more and more private prestige, by more and more power, and eventually isolated himself more and more from the rest of humanity. His suspicion grows, his isolation grows, and the vicious cycle leading to a paranoid attitude begins to develop.

The dictator is not only a sick man, he is also a cruel opportunist. He sees no value in any other person and feels no gratitude for any help he may have received. He his suspicious an dishonest and believes that his personal ends justify any menas he may use to achieve them. Peculiarly enough, every tyrant still searches for some self-justification. Without such a soothing device ofr his own conscience, he cannot live. His attitude toward other people is manipulative; to him, they are merely tools for the advancement of his own interests…

It is because the dictator is afraid, albeit unconsciously, of his own internal contradictions, that he is afraid of the same internal contradictions of his fellow men. He must purge and purge, terrorize and terrorize n order to still his own raging inner drives. He must kill every doubter, destroy every person who makes a mistake, imprison everyone who cannot be proved to be utterly single-minded…

— Dr. Joost A. M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought, Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, 1956, p 115-6.

Clear explanation of Occupy Toronto

This retrieval of conservatism is significant.

Corporatism and organizations that are based on monopolies of information are quickly becoming unacceptable.

Franchising is not exempt from these transnational trends.