Coalition of Franchisee Associations

December 9, 2020

Jonathan Maze on the "Partnership"

Franchisees revolt against McDonald’s growing fees
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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

With “partners “ like McDonalds, who needs enemies?

Anonymous said...

If MCD was presented an invoice in the same way they presented theirs to the operators they wouldn't pay it either.

Anonymous said...

They are not our partner!!!

Anonymous said...

Are we "partners" in the McCafe revenue from sales in all of the millions of retail outlets where McCafe is sold outside of a McDonald's restaurant?

Oh, right, we are only "partners" in the cost paying fees and rent on the McCafe sales that WE fund and sell in our restaurants, but not in the revenue stream from the no-cost sales in those other places. Partners in debt, but not in profit.

Anonymous said...

McCafe funds (profits) should subsidize our Tech fees, Archways,etc

Anonymous said...

Like to hear NOA reaponse to todays NFLA vall, was this the right message and format?

Personally, it seemed whiney, misdirected, and ineffective. No one wants a fight, but to capitulate so early in the purported name of system unity. Is not gonna be the message corporate bigwigs with no historical understanding of our system will digest or understand.

Richard Adams said...

Owner/Operators can give up anything and everything in the name of "system unity".
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Anonymous said...

Screw unity. Its time to take off the gloves. The only way to influence them is thru the stock price.

Anonymous said...

Many of us were around during the McCafe retail rollout. I do not remember the details but I am certain that the argument was that O/O's funded/built the McCafe brand and the company decided to turn it into an alternate revenue stream for THEM. This was stopped, someone else would know the details better than I do, from what I remember the company was to either return all profits made from retail McCafe sales or split it or something. They never did.

Instead, about three years ago they once again unilaterally decided to "return" these funds to the Owners by forcing us to purchase new, replacement McCafe machines. In other words, the only way that we would receive the funds agreed/guarenteed and promised to us required to buy a new machine. This is NOT what we agreed to when they rolled out the product at Wal Mart and wherever else it is sold.

This is now a distinct pattern with these people, they NEVER give ground, when they appear to give ground they find a way to make it beneficial to them again. When McCafe happened, everyone expected royalty checks in a few years; instead we got an invoice for a $12,000 machine in each store.

For what it's worth, I will never completely trust McDonald's accounting, look no further than a remodel/rebuild to see the nonsense- they expense everything, real or imagined to our side of the ledger including architectural fees that are absolutely stunning- especially considering that they have a limited number of designs, rebuilds/new stores especially are pulled off of the shelf, possibly with a few localized modifications but we are charged as if the building plans were custom made for our particular restaurant. I've shared these fees with a GC friend of mine. We pay more for a single set of plans that are nearly completely turnkey than he pays for a brand new, custom set of plans for a mid-sized, multi-story office building. Service fees ought to cover their G&A, ought to cover what is now third party inexperienced project managers and the rest but they find a way to charge us for that too on every project.

The the rent/service fee rebate on Happy Meal toys is a long story but short version is them calling it a "subsidy" is either a deliberate mischaracterization (lie)or it's simply ignorance. Could be both, I believe with all of the turnover on their end they often do things that don't make sense (except for them) and at least some of this is that they simply don't know better. They've got to work WITH us if they have any interest at all in a relationship- it's not that we won't live up to our obligations because we do, it's that they don't even know what theirs are or why.

From where I sit it looks like they are arrogant and ignorant but it could just be the latter and they're too proud to ask or simply don't think to ask or involve us when these dumb decisions are made.

They have managed to minimize their expenses at our expense at every turn, in every way that they can find and rest assured someone is digging around looking for the next way to scrape more from us. I wonder when they'll confiscate our Co-Op refunds? Coke rebates are gone, Happy Meal rent/service fee rebates will soon be gone, we haven't seen an OPNAD rebate in a very long time and they just keep piling it on us.

I'm thrilled that our leadership has drawn a line in the sand, enough is enough. It's time to re-level the playing field and the truth is that if we learned nothing else this year it's that we really don't need them.

The best thing that they could do is just get out of the way, we've got this.