Max Brenner

In Summer Hill, Fair Trade Hot Chocolate is about $5-6 iirc, not a chain/franchise. Local independent coffee shops are cheaper but way too sweet (cut down).

 

Um, so they bought the head office for $7.4m in 2012 and spent a bunch of cash on it and then sold it for $40m (no decimal point required) in Dec 2017.

And then sold their trophy home (with an asking price of $30m) which sold a month ago (no sale price disclosed) and then put the business into administration the same day?

Max Brenner couldn't pay for ice-cream – or superannuation

This sounds like a lot of creditors are going to be disappointed.

I'm glad I'm not one of them, as I might start to get imagination problems about how the business was managed in terms of sales $ per sqm, salaries vs gross profit ratios, stock turns per month, and other curios like accrued expense accounts and stuff.

Maybe bums through the door just dropped off a cliff, so hopefully the administrators can sort it out (at some exorbitant hourly rate, of course..)

 

Nothing suss there.......

 

So according to you, every speciality chocolateier shops hot chocolates are the same as every other generic Cafe who most of the times use Cadbury drinking chocolate or something simialr


Thanks for the laugh

 

Thanks everyone for your feedback - basically bad business model and not the first of many.
Got it.

 

well they lasted 12 years, some would say thats very successful

 

The chocolate bald man as a stand-alone in a trendy suburb would have lines to next week and a massive instagram following. Not special as a chain. For what it is worth I thought the place was ok and have visited multiple times over the last few years and it always seemed reasonably busy.

 

I know he just finished spending an absolute bomb on a new head office. Multistory over-engineered concrete building with all the bells and whistles. Maybe he overstretched..
You need to sell a lot of waffles to pay for something like that.

 

Could the closure have to do with all the protests that occurred in front of them over the years?
The campaign against the Max Brenner protesters
Perhaps divestment is working?

 

More on this-the article seemed to predict the end for Max Brenner 7 years ago:

 

Highly doubt it.

 

Because the Americans wouldn’t know a good coffee if it slapped them in the face. I have a Canadian colleague (same same) that loves StarBucks coffee and thinks our coffee is disgusting. Where I work in Melbourne CBD it’s very hard to find a bad coffee so it’s not like she has just been unlucky.

I wouldn’t drink StarBucks coffee if it was paid for me for the rest of my life (My wife and I easily spend over $2,500 a year on coffee so that’s saying something).

 

Is that even legal?

If it is, then something is seriously broken....

 

From the article, it sounds like the bank and other mortgage providers recalled the loans.

 

Probably. In fact, it's probably really, really legal, after a bunch of lawyers have checked it out, and gave it the "let's see how it rolls" thumbs up...

But it doesn't seem to excel in the optics department.

And, in the overall context of the situation, this doesn't help either...

’I have literally spilt blood, sweat and tears and I’ve been treated like garbage’

 

I've always wondered when big business like this go down..
Is it even legal to say, no show an d you're not being paid fo rthe last month ?

And if they can't afford to pay super or last months pay, unless they fire sale a piece of land, they're not going to get any more

 

I can't answer your question, but maybe @Terry_w wants to throw in 2c worth.

It sounds a bit naf to me, and, whilst I'm not 100% sure, it would be hard to argue with a big garage sale being had by whoever that was, (assuming your assertion were true regarding lack of pay..), with large amounts of chocolate, shop fittings and other stock at bargain basement prices that even Amazon would be surprised at.

Not that I would condone such behaviour in any way, if it were illegal or unethical.

 

Hot off the press: Sears & Roebuck goes under.

 

Lol....not exactly hot news, Sears has been in financial trouble since the 1990's and has been "going into bankruptcy" for the last 5 years.

I haven't been following it too closely but its my understand the issue is Eddie Lampert who is a financial capitalist who has been sucking the business dry for the last decade and using it as a money siphon as its been going down for the last decade.

Some details here - Sears files for bankruptcy; Eddie Lampert steps down as CEO though it doesn't really explain how he is making money while the business is losing money......but considering he has just "lent the business another $300m" as part of this bankruptcy process.....I figure he knows what he is doing.


What is HOT News though is the US Retail sales numbers only being 0.1% increase today (0.6% expected)
- Retail sales edged up amid the biggest drop in spending at restaurants and bars in nearly 2 years

Lots of people digging into what this means/why the numbers came out this way this morning.

 

Max Brenner’s lifeline falls through


Article says the Reno caused financial pain and people stopped getting paid super around this time.

Sounds ludicrous