Baristas Coffee Company, Inc. (BCCI)

[BobSinCA]

Forbes likely took cash for the ad, but not from BCCI.

BCCI 'bought' $1.7M worth of media buy when they issued common stock and preferred stock in Q4 to a media buy company on October 1, 2013 (announcing press release was recently posted on ihub. For some reason, it is no longer on BCCI's web site but can be seen in the company's recently issued financial statements, upon which I will comment next week after analysis).

Likely it was that company which paid Forbes, and that company which has recently had other media buys on CNBC, etc.

The objective of these 'national' promotions, when the company only has actual stores in three states (WA, MT, and FL) is to attract franchisees -- and stock buyers.

So far, they have been successful with the stock; time will tell on franchisees. From a 'filed paperwork' perspective, BCCI has been able to sell franchises in over half the country for over a year; the fact that they have not been successful in selling franchises, and need to resort to high profile advertising, creates questions about the business model faced by potential franchisees.

It would be helpful if a poster could point to other now successful franchisors who used this sort of advertising (national, retail, forbes/cnbc style; versus in franchising shows and magazines) to sell franchising when in their infancy.

I am expecting the company to announce a new franchise agreement within three months (no inside information, just a logical extension of what has been happening). Terms will likely NOT be announced, but I suspect it will be a 'sweetheart' deal, to prime the pump, with franchisee costs 'below list' of $25K/store plus 6% royalty plus 1% marketing fee plus $100K equipment plus real estate lease commit (see Prime Equity Research report) -- with a commit to do a disproportionate amount of local 'corporate' marketing(eg more than 1% of sales, which is $150/yr), as was done recently with the FL openings. All this for an expected sales model of about $150K/year.

Note five stores have been closed in last year or two, so unless used in FL some equipment is likely very available at a nominal price.

Apologies if this has been covered by someone else in the day plus since the initial post was made.