Interesting that more franchisee ads are starting to appear -- can you advise as to where, so we can listen/watch??
If you go back to March/April of 2014, the company put significant resources into a campaign to attract franchisees, funded by a 'media buy' made October 1, 2013 in exchange for company stock.
It turned out much of the effort was for paid (?) insertion into lists of attractive franchise opportunities. Some of the results show at the top of this ihub page.
The only published result of this intensive campaign was the 8 state BMOC master franchise plan announced in May, but since canceled.
The recent registration statement said that company planned to find ten franchisees over the course of the year, subject to availability of financing.
And that is the issue for the company -- is the business model sufficiently robust to attract franchisee capital, given the risk of inappropriate behavior by baristas (see recent 'bust' of a different coffee kiosk company in the Seattle area), regulatory constraints, etc.
With Q3 financials showing operating losses of over $0.60 for every $1.00 of revenue -- without the 'overhead' of franchise fees, and with senior management taking no salaries -- that appears to be a difficult question to affirmatively answer.
The problem faced by the company is lack of proof points. More stores have closed then opened over the last year, company owned or otherwise; the one program which is close to a franchise situation with significant third party capital involved, SW FL (Cape Coral), opened two stores in Q3/Q4 of 2013 with great fanfare and advertising support. In February, a third store was announced for opening, but it hasn't happened; to the best of my knowledge, reason for non-opening has not been publicly disclosed.
