Coalition of Franchisee Associations

March 31, 2020

The King Has Cash

Burger King’s owner is sending cash and thermometers to its franchisees
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16 comments:

Anonymous said...

While McDonalds stands pretty much on the side lines, BK reaches out to help insure its operators survival !

Wall Street- are you listening?

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, MCD has ulterior motives in not offering help/breaks to the O?O community.

Richard Adams said...

Yup, no matter what they say this is a great opportunity to further reduce the number of USA Owner/Operators. Getting the total number down to 800/900 people would save corporate tons in admin and overhead.
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Anonymous said...

Yep, listening to ANOTHER conference call explaining your need to acquire PPP loans, since corporation intends zero assistance. While NFLA and OPNAD continue same messages of stay the course discounting. They havent a clue. Want to help save a rwstaurant, go work one for day.

Anonymous said...

Uep, and to save stock valuation they need to cut overhead again. Another field office reduction underway!

Anonymous said...

What evidence do you have of another field office reduction? I haven’t heard that one yet....

Richard Adams said...

Evidence? I took that comment as speculation based on previous corporate performance.
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Anonymous said...

Good luck getting anything more than a few bucks in PPP stimulus money from the SBA. Its $349 billion total and there are over 32 million businesses in the USA.

What a freaking joke Congress is. I'm glad that I donated directly to a few decent Reps and Senators and NOT to McPAC. Thats the onoly way to get to the front of the line. The ones that McPAC donated to are all too busy trying to get violent predators released from prison to help out small business.

Anonymous said...

They could cut another 50% of field staff. I get ZERO support as it is.No big loss

Anonymous said...

For many years MCD has had too many operators and too many stores. Having too many operators in the co-ops has made it easier to control. By holding out the possibility to expand if they play on the company side by voting for ineffective promotions that only drive top line sales with no bottom line. We have all seen it. It is part of the reason many operators are struggling. In the region I'm in we have about 100 operator organizations. The region would be stronger with fifty or less. More successful operators would require less debt to implement
reinvestment's, they could afford more and better employee benefits, they would present a more formidable challenge to our competitors. On the downside for the company they would be harder to control and less likely to throw money away on unprofitable investments and promotions. Currently, they are, as only MCD can, encouraging older operators to retire and move on. Mainly because those operators challenge MCD reasoning and are less easily swayed to do ineffective things. They know what they are doing with the age discrimination issues but that is exactly what it is. They want them out of the system. They have basically said to the 2nd gen's that if your parents are pushing back on selling "come to us" we will handle them. So much for family values. If they push too hard there could be serious problems. Many Senior operators have been cooperative in recent years and have taken on a lot of debt for the forced reinvestment's. selling now would generate less retirement income but MCD doesn't give one damn about that.

Anonymous said...

Easy, heres the evidence, the only factors corporation has to generate revenue.. raise rents, cut overhead. Historically, in belt tightening times... corporate consolidates, laysoff. There is still too much overhead. And with added cost in the relocation, they need to dump office space in Chicago and nationwide.

This crisis has shown them they can live without the remaining overpriced field units. Still alot of Operations VP's, FBP and OAs that make way too much, with too many benefits.

ROIP has zero meaning, as that overhead is frivilous in the year ahead (at least). They wont attack long term franchisees now, the system NEED that experience to dig out of the hole. And those 2nd gen suck asses better hope they have the P&L capabilities. Or they too will learn a hard lesson fast. Perhaps going back to working for Mom and Dad.

Anonymous said...

I concur completely with the above ("easy") comment. The majority (not all) of sec gens are drones who will cave to the dictatorial demands of MCD. Why do you think MCD is trying so hard to get long time "legacy" operators out? Because they know they can easily control the second gens!
lambs to the slaughter...…...

Anonymous said...

If you examine the MCD annual report it is clear that MCD has revenue streams other than the revenue coming from the restaurants. In the past they have owned a separate real estate investment Co. that owned several high profile office building in downtown Chicago managed by Tony Pearl. I don't know if it is still an operating investment today or not. I know a family that had a very successful paper company that they sold to MCD and made millions. At one time MCD owned many luxury condo's around the world. Top management could use them for personal vacations. When not being used by MCD they generated rental income. The MCD real Estate and financial executives were very savvy people and put the company cash flow in good investments. I don't know if any of that now remains. I agree that the MCD structure in the regions cannot be paid by that regions service fee's. Office rent, cars, travel, laptops, salary's, on and on.

I hope all of you are submitting loan applications to SBA tomorrow.

Anonymous said...

RE: SBA app tomorrow: “fingers crossed”. Just simply not used to government programs that put money in my pockets, in fact I’m used to the reverse. Does anyone here think they will be required/obligated to the taxpayer to raise funding levels when $350B runs short? As I said : “fingers crossed”

Anonymous said...

Mr Adams, Thank you for your relentless efforts over the years to help the owners of this great brand. I believe many of us would like to know, as a percentage, the increased traffic to this site. Say 2018 (pre NOA) vs. 2019? Again, thank you x100!

Richard Adams said...

You're welcome. As for traffic - over the past 20 months traffic to this site has more than doubled. I attribute this to >>> Unrest over cash flow >>> the formation of NOA >>> Easterbrook being replaced with an inexperienced management team. A related factor might be that the formation of NOA gave Owner/Operators the courage to be more open and vocal (but not vocal enough) so this is a good place to express yourself.

Funny story - an Operator friend tells me he once mentioned this website to a McDonald's corporate VP. The VP huffed that the material here was mere "clickbait". Sorry, but clickbait is important to websites that sell advertising and get paid by the number of visits. Since I don't sell advertising our number of "clicks" is only a minor interest.

Imagine, a corporate VP who spends their days telling other people how to run their businesses but doesn't understand the business model of something as simple as the internet.
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