The End of Quiznos' Franchise Empire?

Can you guesss how many Quiznos franchises remain open in 2022 of almost 5,000 locations? Is Quiznos the greatest failure in franchising of all time?

So back in the day Quiznos was a genuine competitor against Subway and franchises were opening all across the country But these sales were based mostly on hype. We have warned buyers against hype on the channel before, and if buyers had called us we would have shown them that despite the growth, Quiznos locations already had problems.

In fact back in 2007 at the height of their growth, franchise owners launched a lawsuit alleging Quiznos was marking up prices unfairly on food sold to franchisees, while also mandating their menu prices too low, so nobody but Quiznos corporate was making any money. Common legal reasons cited for many lawsuits included terms like fraud, misrepresentation, a duty to disclose, negligent misrepresentation causing financial harm, breach of contract, breaches of the implied covenant of good faith.....you get the idea. There were multiple lawsuits against Quiznos the largest resulted in a $206m judgement. Another lawsuit was won for 95 million that included franchisees who were never even able to open a location due to disputes. This is a short video so we won't cover all the lawsuits but needless to say there were quite a few. Quiznos current disclosure indicates 10 full pages of litigation.

It was no secret, in the industry at least, that Quiznos was a mess. And some of the shiny veneer began to crack as more and more publicity showed Quiznos in a negative light.

In 2006, a Quiznos senior VP was having an online conversation with someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl. Lo and behold it was a police sting operation and the VP whose name we will not mention was arrested and charged with five felony charges. Apparently this VP of marketing was the selfsame person behind what commercial? You guessed it. Spongemonkeys.

And if the Spongemonkeys werent bad anough Quiznos the made a commercial of a "sexy" toaster oven who said "Put it in me Scott, it's a foot of flavor"

In 2009 to try and drum up business Quiznos started offering free sandwiches. Needless to say Franchisees not making money don't have free sub giveaways at the top of the list and Consumerist reported many customers were being denied subs. A few days after the now tarnished promotion Quiznos suggested they would help cover costs of the free subs.

By 2014 Quiznos was in deep trouble and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In 2016 after the long period of awful franchisee relations a NEW CEO Susan Lintonsmith started making moves to make things right by cutting franchisee payments and creating new loyalty programs. In 2018 private investment firm "High Bluff" bought Quiznos for an undisclosed amount. According to their website company has over 30 years of experience managing, investing, leading and transforming consumer businesses across the restaurant, entertainment, food, beverage and retail markets. So we will see how things go for Quiznos. Which brings us to today and how many Quiznos locations remain after a peak of 5000 locations. As of 2020, as the data is always 1 year behind, Quiznos shows 229 stores remain and they have continued to close locations over the past three years.
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