Allied Brands (ABQ) wishes to advise that through it’s Retail Management Division it has successfully executed a purchase and sale agreement with Bennett Investments Pty Ltd (formerly trading as “Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf” retail stores). These 4 new stores will form part of the Franchise Services division and are to be re-branded as Villa & Hut stores and franchised over a 6 month period. Allied Brands will pay $150,000 in total for the four stores, which are all located in Victoria. Villa & Hut has a strong brand presence in Victoria with already 20 outlets as well as the company headquarters. The funding for the acquisition will be through existing internal cash resources. This acquisition, in addition to the Freedom/BaySwiss (Steinhoff Pty Ltd) stores acquired by the Franchise services division, totals another 18 stores for the Villa & Hut group. When completed this will take the number of Villa & Hut stores nationally to 50 and add further coffee production through the Allied centralised manufacturing facility.
CEO of Allied Brands Shane Radbone said, ”this is a perfect addition to the Villa & Hut growth plans and fits ideally with our Retail Management Division. It will add four further stores for sale by the division, plus incremental coffee production and royalty income. Adding stores through our Retail Management and Franchise Services divisions is very cost effective growth for our group”. Radbone said the intention is to re-badge and franchise the stores to individual franchisees and sell as Villa & Hut franchised stores. The sale price for the stores is expected to be at least $200,000 each and provide annual royalty and product supply income to the business. CEO Villa & Hut, Franz Madlener said, ”when Villa & Hut was acquired in June 2009, we managed to sell 80% of the stores to franchisees inside 4 months. Selling franchises and providing franchise services is what we are good at”. There is already one of the new stores under a Heads of Agreement for sale and the company is hopeful of selling the remaining 3 stores over the next 6 months.
Allied Brands (ABQ) is a company specialising in the franchising sector based in Australia. Allied has three divisions to its business model. The first division is the Retail Management division, which includes the following brands : Baskin Robbins, Cookie Man, Villa and Hut and Kenny’s Cardiology. This division also has a focus on vertical integration with its own manufacturing facility in Sydney providing a range of products to the franchised stores, including coffee and cookie dough. It makes it’s money through a percentage of sales royalty income stream and margin from the manufacturing facility. The bulk of the Retail Franchised businesses are based in Australia, however, the Cookie Man brand has stores in India, China, Greece and Singapore. The second division is the Direct to the Home division, which includes the following brands : Awesome Water and Awesome Entertainment. This is a direct to the home model providing water cooler and LCD plasma screens to the home. The third division is the newly launched Franchised services division. This is a service division to the franchising sector providing services to assist franchise companies and/or those wanting to franchise.
