“We allege that Retail Food Group withheld critical profit and loss information about these corporate stores from incoming franchisees, and falsely represented that these loss-making stores were viable or profitable,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims said in a release.
Shares in Retail Food Group fell 21 per cent to 7.2 cents after 45 minutes of trade on Tuesday.
In documents issued to incoming franchisees, Retail Food Group claimed it could not estimate earnings for a particular franchise.
In fact, the ACCC alleges Retail Food Group knew the earnings of each loss-making store, and was well aware that the stores being sold or licensed had been loss-making in the current or the previous financial year.
“The prospective franchisees simply had no way of knowing the true financial performance of the stores, and we allege that Retail Food Group took advantage of this when selling or licensing the stores,” Mr Sims said.
The ACCC’s case also involves allegations in relation to the franchise marketing funds.
All franchisees were required to pay marketing fees to Retail Food Group, to be held and administered by the franchisor, to pay for marketing and advertising activities.
The ACCC alleges that Retail Food Group used these marketing funds, to which franchisees had contributed, to pay for non-marketing expenses in breach of the Franchising Code. In some cases, this allegedly included personnel costs for executives and employees who were not in marketing roles.
In the case of the Michel’s Patisserie marketing fund, it is also alleged that Retail Food Group paid around $22 million from the marketing fund to cover a range of operational and other non-marketing expenses, which included the cost of implementing a business model changing from fresh cakes to frozen in franchise stores, and part of the losses from some corporate stores.
“The Franchising Code makes it clear that marketing funds can only be used to cover legitimate marketing and advertising expenses, administration costs, expenses disclosed to franchisees or those agreed to by a majority of franchisees.”
“We allege that Retail Food Group acted in breach of the Code, and in some cases unconscionably, by making improper undisclosed payments from the marketing funds for its own benefit, to the detriment of franchisees,” Mr Sims said.
The ACCC is seeking declarations, injunctions, pecuniary penalties, disclosure and adverse publicity orders, a compliance program order, redress orders, and costs.
