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I don’t really understand what you think the core of the problem is?

Why should a consumer care who owns the franchise? What difference does that make to me?

If you have a service station with a Starbucks and a Burger King are you saying they both secretly serve the same coffee? I’m sure Starbucks franchise agreements do not allow that and it will be the coffee that Starbucks select and roast (whether you think that’s good or bad), not the coffee Burger King supply. So there is a real difference and a real choice there isn’t there?

They share a loading bay and a till system? Why on earth do care about that?

Because it is fake competition, which is pretty much what we get anymore. With real competition, one of the two places might do a better job of pleasing customers and get most of the business. With real competition, the employees preparing and serving the food will get a free market wage. Otherwise, it is all Disneypeople serving Disneyfood.

it's not been free market competition for a long time. I look out at the number of Pret a Mangers that office workers around me go to at lunch. It's like watching pigs going to the troughs to feed. The buildings empty, the pigs go to the next available spot and they return to their pens. They don't really give a shit really how long the lines are. Also fast food employees getting free market wages? They get minimum wage and if they work there for two years, they get a dollar increase to their wage. That's it, there is no lateral promotion.

Part of the original notion of 'brands' was that they convey a promise to the buyer about the nature and quality of a product. It's a betrayal of the consumers' trust if the franchised version does not live up to the original brand's standards

nowhere did the gp say that the products are fake (generic coffee with the starbucks label slapped on top). so i'm guessing that those coffeehouses are franchises operating like any other franchise, it's just in this case, they're owned/operated by one company.

Much like how they only put Coca Cola products in the Coca Cola vending machines and how they only put Pepsi products in the Pepsi vending machines (but still own both), the Starbucks people get their special snowflake beans and the people opposite in Costa get their special snowflake beans.

Out the back, when the big lorry pulls up, stock gets updated across the site. There is not a special lorry just for the Starbucks people (e.g. Americans) to get their special beans. It all comes together on one big lorry from the same distribution hub.

Why should the customer care?

If you only have a few minutes to wait for your train and you want to get a large coffee for your journey then you know that there is no point 'shopping around'. You are not going to get a more competitive coffee by checking out the half dozen options, you might as well just get what is easiest and least stressful.

On a deeper level the customer should care because they are being fleeced. None of that coffee is that good really, if you want a decent cup of coffee then you really need to be going to an independent place where the staff are more inclined to get to know your name (if you go there every day) and more likely to know how you like your drink. You get service with a smile instead of a minimum wage, 'can't be bovvered' shrug.

> If you only have a few minutes to wait for your train and you want to get a large coffee for your journey then you know that there is no point 'shopping around'. You are not going to get a more competitive coffee by checking out the half dozen options, you might as well just get what is easiest and least stressful.

But the Starbucks coffee is a different size, different beans, different method of preparation, different price, different type of cup, than the Burger King coffee. There's a point shopping around between those two isn't there? One may be a more competitive offer than the other to you. Maybe you're price sensitive so you go with Burger King. Maybe you want a coffee prepared with espresso rather than filter so you go with Starbucks.

> On a deeper level the customer should care because they are being fleeced. None of that coffee is that good really

Well now we're just down to your personal opinion on different coffee brands and independence!

The early days of letting shops and franchises into service stations saw a few different, and contractually separate, companies weakly competing. A few independents mixed in with the WH Smith that was often as well as a main shop. There would be real alternative choices. Weakly competing as a services has an effective monopoly for a 50 mile stretch of motorway, so they were never going to be competing with Tesco or corner caf prices.

Now the entire service station is single supplier agreements making the entire service station effectively a single franchise. Even in the petrol station shop. Half the choices are just branding styles on the front of the same parent. Chances of a real independent are somewhere around nil. Prices and brand choice are heavily constrained accordingly. Quality and service drops accordingly so a burger or coffee franchise on the motorway is a pale reflection of the high street.

If one of the shops doesn't have product x there's no longer any point checking the other shops, or the petrol station shop, it won't be in those either. The only answer is normally to drive to the next services and make sure it's showing a different brand on the sign before pulling in.

With hindsight I think it was a mistake allowing the motorway sign to be branded in any way.

The best answer, of course, is leave the motorway and find a proper shop or caf. :)

At one point triple combos of Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell ("Kentacohut") were common in Singapore -- and they didn't even try to hide it, there was a single shared counter for ordering.

One in the US: http://www.dailypress.com/news/york-county/dp-nws-ypq-kentac...

FWIW, those 3 show up together worldwide because those 3 brands are all owned by "Yum Brands." In the US the trucks that deliver generally show branding for all 3 brands + Yum.

> and they didn't even try to hide it

Why would they?

I don't see why it's something to hide, as if they're doing something wrong.

> Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

:(

LOL it's been almost 5 months and websites still haven't been able to comply with this?

Anyway this works: http://web.archive.org/web/20171013204131/http://www.dailypr...

Thanks for finding a EU-friendly link! And I agree, it's absolutely astonishing that 5 months in, there are still websites left that haven't worked out a compliance solution.

It's honestly kind of sad. If huge municipal websites, government websites etc. are able to follow GDPR then surely a news website can too and not only that. There has been like two years to prepare for it too. There are no excuses of why you're not compliant unless you really don't want to be compliant.

The excuse could definitely be that their fundamental business model is not compliant with GDPR. If they can't financially justify complying with it, then they can't allow access from European countries.

Edit: Maybe that's what you meant by "unless you really don't want to be compliant".

Yep, that's exactly what I meant.

Here I'll just drop this stoner ode to YUM Brands operational synergies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ8ViYIeH04

It would've been awesome if they'd known to sprinkle their barely-rap with some interstitial Singlish.

I don't think the choice is 'fake' at all.

'Operated by' really means owned by: the IP, processes, foods, experiences are created entirely separately, it's just one owner.

If the food is good and people like it then hey.

That said, I do wonder about quality, freshness, real experience, real innovation - no doubt scale provides all sorts of advantages, but it cuts out other things as well.

There are zero 'scale' restaurants in my neighbourhood and I don't miss anything really - other than a coffee chain store. There's a knock-off Chipotle which fills the only hole I might miss on occasion!

> the choice is a fake one

I can’t buy a Whopper at Pizza Express, the parent companies of both are owned by different people, both parent companies have different supply chains and the franchising rules for both are separate.

In what way don’t I have a choice? Because Compass are contracting the cleaning, logistics, and personnel (who, for what it’s worth, will go through entirely different franchise-mandated training)? Seems a bit of a reach.

I've noticed food courts in American malls seem to have a similar setup. I remember ordering "bourbon chicken" at a Cajun-style restaurant in a food court and realizing it tasted suspiciously similar to the Teriyaki chicken served at the Japanese stall next door.

Thanks for the background, that explains a lot about UK rail station food. Is this model also used in German rail stations?

Communism was more honest, they didn't have fake brands.

Sincere smiles from an automated food retail startup in China. We are going for 100% personalized orders, in essence the consumer defines the recipe (nominally after discovery from a set of pre-ordained options they are free to deviate from entirely).