A few things:
1) Jillian may have very well already sold at least some of her shares. They were granted to her fully vested so she was under no obligation, as far as I know, to hold them. Whether she did sell or not is unknown.
2) I agree, right now Parsi isn't looking so hot. Sometimes bringing celebrities on board can help to secure financing, so I don't really consider that to be a blunder, but his big miss was not to secure at least a few million dollars while the stock was in the .20s. As they say, "strike while the iron is hot."
3) I spoke to someone on this board who shall remain unnamed, who was kind enough to share an email correspondence with Joey from last month. Suffice it to say, there appears to be some legitimate reasons for the LOIs to have not been executed into something binding. Now, whether he was truthful in his correspondence is unknown as well, but the information appears to be verifiable and I plan to work towards verifying later this week.
The bad news is that we might be waiting without news for some time. The good news, if you want to call it that, is that eventually I do believe there will be some news -- that hopefully can get us back over .10. If you're in the hole, now may be the appropriate time to average down so if/when news does come, you can get out if you wish with minimal losses.
4) I still believe in my gut that Jillian did not sign up to promote two locations. Nor did Gay and Kaufman.
5) Assuming the Yelp reviews are not fake, there appears to be sufficient demand as evidenced by solid revenues at both locations. I'd rather have a product people want and a CEO who can't sell it than a product nobody wants and a CEO who is top notch.
6) Someone who has Parsi's ear really needs to convince him to look into airports. Yes, the rent is going to be extraordinarily high, but a) there are literally millions of potential customers, and b) it goes a far way toward creating both a known brand across the country and world, and more importantly, creating demand for a local Giggles if customers like their experience at the airport and want something similar back home.
7) My short term thesis is negative. Long term, I still like the risk/reward. A LOT can change in five years. If by 2022 we're still at two locations with 100k in cash, well, at that point, we are pretty much f$%ked.
