Thin End of a Wedge

It has recently been reported in the press that a member of staff of a Domino’s franchisee was seen in Asda buying around 15 bags of potato wedges.The Domino’s worker was photographed at the counter wearing Domino’s branded uniform.

The presumption was that the £1 bags of potato wedges would be split up and sold in portions costing reportedly £4.

The image was uploaded onto social media and went viral. It was reported that Domino’s were investigating and that they have required standards where franchisees buy all food from approved suppliers to maintain the high standards customers expect.

According to Damian Humphrey, who heads up Ashtons Legal’s nationally recognised franchise team: “This shows the importance of franchisors not only imposing brand standards and a code of appropriate behaviour on its franchisees, but also in seeking to both monitor compliance of and enforce these standards. An incident like this can cause immeasurable damage to the brand and it only takes a moment of thoughtless behaviour for serious harm to be caused to the brand. In this case the franchisees are clearly obligated to buy potato wedges from a particular source, but by going out and deviating from the system the adverse publicity will no doubt have a detrimental effect on Domino’s network”.