Pie Face's Media firestorm
Media coverage and scrutiny is focusing on the franchise’s troubles.
Fresh from entering voluntary administration and shutting down more than a dozen stores in Australia, the Pie Face franchise has become a hot topic in domestic media.
Pie Face news has revolved around the closure of around 20 stores and the 130 part-time employees who would be losing their jobs.
The Sydney Morning Herald detailed over the weekend the franchise’s flaws which include failing to reverse plummeting sales and too much focus on expanding overseas without first stabilising the domestic stores.
The Australian Financial Review lamented how Pie Face lost its way and "missed" vital business ingredients that led to its demise. Smart Company also ran a story where a worried franchise expert had predicted the collapse since it had been “overhyped and expanded too quickly.”
The Australian Business Review published a profile on Pie Face Wayne Homschek which they deemed to be a “Pied Piper of corporate Australia” who cobbled together an impressive list of early investors behind his passion enterprise. These included the likes of retail entrepreneur Brett Blundy, Rothschild Australia chairman Trevor Rowe, former Austereo executive Brian Bickmore and Fat Prophets’s Angus Geddes, and finally, the “whale” that was billionaire US casino mogul Steve Wynn who invested $US15 million to launch Pie Face in New York – a strategy that ultimately failed to take off.
Pie Face executives insist that the business abroad remains viable, and there were even a few balancing reports that that tried to paint the Pie Face franchise in a better light, such as NineMSN’s story about franchisees defending the brand’s business model amid claims by that it was making no profit.
Finally, The Australian Business Review reports of alleged unpaid building debts for Pie Face expansion efforts in the US.
