Bad bed-fellows

摘要

I had to apologise to the editor for taking so long to deliver this column; I'd been waiting for my blood to stop boiling. What caused this sanguinary simmering? An article from last month's Australidn Financial Review (AFR) about the problems of the Eagle Boys pizza franchise, which was put into administration in July. The article was headlined 'Eagle Boys collapse puts franchising sector on notice' and detailed the decline of the struggling chain, which once had 340 stores and was Australia's second largest pizza chain. Today, the AFR says, it has just 112 franchised stores, with 20 existing franchise agreements having already expired and another 40 due to expire by the end of 2018.