Retail Food Group releases new response to A Current Affair's story
Find out what RFG said in a statement.
"RFG has over 1,000 franchisees across Australia who in turn employ a broader network of more than 15,000 employees. They make a huge contribution to their local communities and economies.
With such a large network, we don’t get it right every time or claim that all of our franchisees and employees are always happy, but we do know that we are working extremely hard to support them in tough retail market conditions. We can’t control shopping centres putting up their rents or wage costs going up, but we are committed to supporting our franchisees in the areas we do control, such as field support and supply chain.
The fact that we have some unhappy former and current franchisees tells us we need to do better in some areas. We are six months into a business-wide review to improve the support, value and services we provide to our franchisees. We recently appointed a new Chief Executive – Australia to help deliver the outcomes of this review to them.
Recently, the focus has been on the negative experiences of some franchisees rather than the majority of our franchisee network who are running successful businesses. Franchise businesses like ours have a better chance of success than most small businesses – the average tenure of an RFG franchisee is seven years, which is consistent with broader franchise industry trends, compared to 60% of small businesses that close within three years."
