In The News

Wylie said (former Wendy's master franchisee) Chang Xi and franchisees had ignored written notices from Supatreats.

'Evidence to date suggests that Mr Chang was throughout working in the background to engineer the situation that has arisen, and then to present the revolt by franchisees as a fait accompli.'

Wylie said there was a risk significant damage had been caused to Supatreats' franchise business model and its ability to re-establish a presence in the New Zealand marketplace.

Former New Zealand Wendy's master franchisee Chang Xi said the franchisee businesses operating in shopping malls had united and collectively abandoned their agreements following restrictive measures from the ice-cream brand's owner, which had harmed local operations.

Xi said local owners fear their businesses will go under and jobs lost if they are forced to return to operate as Wendy's.

'We rebranded as a group as we feel that we need to be separated from this international franchisor to be able to survive,' Xi said.

'We have encountered a very terrible situation. All New Zealand franchisees are extremely upset.'

Restaurant Brands will continue to run marketing and operations for the brand in New Zealand and will step into the position of franchisor to existing independent franchisees, and provide development support to new franchisees.

In recent years it has been selling its regional and lower volume Pizza Hut stores to independent franchisees and at the end of the company's first quarter it owned 33 Pizza Hut stores in New Zealand, with 65 operated by independent franchisees, bringing the total network to 98 stores.

This is the 24th year of the Westpac New Zealand Franchise Awards, which have been measuring and recognising top performers since 1995. Winning an Award not only represents the pinnacle of achievement, but provides considerable publicity that helps build business and attract top staff or franchisees. Read our report on last year’s winners here.

Entry is open to all members of the Franchise Association. Note – the timeline has been moved forward from previous years to allow more time for judging.

Mike Riley went to work to sell burgers and left a hero. A police officer, only known as Officer S, has also received a bravery award for the same incident when an agitated Pera Smiler, 25, walked into Upper Hutt McDonald's on September 8, 2015 with a .303 rifle.

Riley, a McDonald's manager, then aged 34, was out the back when a staff member screamed that a man with a gun had came in and Riley's first steps, of many, to heroism were taken.

"I could see my staff on the floor crying, I could see my close friend on the phone to her partner ... I decided I would try to talk to [Smiler]," Riley told Stuff.

What transpired next saw Riley getting staff and customers out of the building, stopping a father and daughter coming back in from the playground, checking the toilets to see if anyone else was left inside, then, remarkably, offering to cook the gunman a burger.

As he walked from place to place, checking it was clear, he had Smiler - alternating between high-agitation and calm - yelling behind him, often with a gun on him, sometimes aimed at his head, and hinting that things could end badly.

"I just said, 'I have a son and I want to go home and see him'. I think that resonated with him." These days Riley who now works in recruitment, just has sympathy for Smiler and his family.

Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway said the taskforce would look at ways to simplify the Holidays Act.

'There's been enormous change in our labour market over the past fifteen years and it's clear we need to look at the Holidays Act with a fresh pair of eyes and ensure it is fit for modern workplaces and new working arrangements,' Mr Lees-Galloway said.

The current law was proving 'difficult and costly' for employers to follow and workers were missing out on what they were owed, he said.

'The legislation needs to be straightforward and simple to implement, and deliver fair rest and entitlements for workers,' Mr Lees-Galloway said.

Download the Cabinet paper on the review here.

'When we looked at shopping logs, haul videos and weekly transactional spend, we saw a very different story play out,' wrote TRA research consultant Jeremy McDonnell in an article based on the study.

'What we saw was that millennials will often put aside their allegedly strongly held attitudes in order to save a dollar, as opposed to voting with it.'

McDonnell argued there's a significant disconnect between the public narrative and what consumers actually do in stores.

'These everyday purchases involve a surprisingly low level of consciousness, which contradicts the current cultural narrative depicting millennials as conscientious, informed buyers. They may talk the talk, but fail to walk the walk,' he wrote.

The intoxicating aroma of KFC will likely continue to pull consumers out of their strong opinions and into the greasy embrace of fried chicken for some time, but consumer behaviour does have a tendency to change over time. And with governments across the world already dabbling in ways to fight the obesity epidemic with regulation, that change could potentially be forced in the future.

Quoting extensively from Patterson v. Domino's Pizza, LLC, 60 Cal. 4^th 474 (2014), the court observed that franchisees acquire a business plan that the franchisor "has created for all of its stores," and that the plan "requires the franchisee to follow a system of standards and procedures." Haitayan, 2018 WL 1626248, at *2 (quoting Patterson, 60 Cal. 4^th at 489). The court also noted that the goal in franchising, "which benefits both parties to the contract, is to build and keep customer trust by ensuring consistency and uniformity in the quality of goods and services, the dress of franchise employees, and the design of the store themselves." Id. (quoting Patterson, 60 Cal. 4^th at 490).