ALLIED "MEGA DEAL" COLLAPSES, ANNOUNCES INSTEAD JUNK "PURCHASE" OF ANOTHER FAILED COFFEE SHOP CHAIN AND MORE CAPITAL RAISING FOR OPERATIONS

As reported in SMART COMPANY, the "big deal" that Allied Brands claimed was being negotiated has failed to materialise. Insiders report that financiers necessary for this "big deal" rejected the idea after reviewing the poor state of Allied Brands balance sheet, with cash still bleeding to support crashed operations. This has included Elders Corporate, which reportedly rejected the deal earlier in the week.

Instead, Allied Brands purchased the parallel coffee shop/homewares division of Freedom Furniture, Bayswiss. Freedom, a SUCCESSFUL company with a much better offering than Villa & Hut, was so anxious to divest these coffee shops that they GAVE THEM to Allied Brands for NOTHING! This a huge turnaround from 2003, when Freedom Management said that "Bayswiss is number one growth vehicle". From that to giving the stores away to Allied Brands, the franchise garbage collectors of Australia. But for the Allied Brands formula, which is designed to overcharge, squeeze, crush, intimidate, and churn the franchisees instead of servicing them, nuturing them, and growing them, a failed chain of coffee shops is ripe for the plucking. Wait until the Bayswiss franchisees find out how much Allied Brands is planning to "overcharge" them for rebranding their stores. It's called Franchisor Rape, mates. Enjoy it!

So immoral has Allied Brands become that places like the Southport School are now ashamed to be in the company of these directors.

And Allied, embarrassed by the collapse of the "big deal" that they were touting, is now spinning this Freedom Bayswiss deal as a "great thing". It's a great disaster, that's what it is.

Buy one overleveraged, failed concept (Villa & Hut's 26 stores), combine it with another 13 failed stores so burdening Freedom that they GAVE them to Allied Brands so that could get these cash burns off the Freedom books, and announce to the world about your "big score" of 13 more junk operations, sucking cash from the company.

It's vintage Peter Graham bullshit. Staff can't even walk around the offices at the Gold Coast there's so much bullshit in the hallways. This will make the second "big deal" that Allied Brands has failed to close (the first being the insane Wendy's acquisition, which couldn't be funded even with money flying out of the banks).

The final hoot is Shane Radbone's claim that Allied Brands will be the home of "entrepreneurs who don't know how to franchise". IT ALREADY IS HOME TO PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO FRANCHISE! Baskin Robbins failed operations (over a 15 year period) are testament to this failure!

Baskin Robbins promised 200+ locations in 2004. The number has hovered in the 80's for a dozen years or more, with more stores being lost just these last few weeks. When will Allied Brands learn how to franchise???

As always, victims are the franchisees for the Freedom/Bayswiss locations who will be told that they are "required" to rebrand and accept massive pricing increases from Allied Brands. The same immoral strategy that Radbone is now calling the "Franchise Services Division". The only service is to the pockets of select Allied Brands management, with the franchisees left to rot.