Day 119 - 02 May 95 - Page 04

     
     1   Q.   Franchising was not a department; it was just you?
     2        A.  No, it was not a department.  After the joint venture
     3        partnership it was closed down, and we became a wholly
     4        owned subsidiary of the Corporation in 1984.  The
     5        Corporation ruled that we would conform to normal
     6        McDonald's type franchising.  That meant there had to be a
     7        department created to seek franchisees, and I was given
     8        that role, in addition to the personnel role.
     9
    10   Q.   Franchising is something like 14 per cent of stores are now
    11        franchised, is it, something like that?
    12        A.  Well, they opened their 600th restaurant last Monday,
    13        and I believe there are 124 franchised stores with 93
    14        franchisees.
    15
    16   Q.   But when did franchising really start to catch on?
    17        A.  Right.  Immediately in 1984 I began looking for
    18        franchisees.  There is a two-year development programme.
    19        I opened the first franchised store in Hayes in Middlesex
    20        in, I believe it was, July of 1986.
    21
    22   Q.   Could you give us a rough figure of how many franchised
    23        stores there would have been on, say, January 1st, 1990,
    24        just approximately?
    25        A.  Yes.  25 to 30, maybe it is more than that.  Yes, they
    26        would all be single units.  All the franchisees would be
    27        single store operators, still in 1990.
    28
    29   Q.   So when you were Head of Security, solely Head of Security,
    30        you used to make visits to stores, did you, in those days?
    31        A.  Yes.
    32
    33   Q.   So you saw the conditions ---
    34        A.  Yes.
    35
    36   Q.   -- that workers were working in?
    37        A.  Yes.
    38
    39   Q.   Did you make a lot of visits, or hardly any, or what?
    40        A.  Oh, yes.
    41
    42   Q.   A lot of visits?
    43        A.  Yes.  I was continually out on the road.  There was
    44        very little to keep me in unless I had a criminal
    45        investigation to carry out, or something like that.
    46
    47   Q.   So you were well-known basically in the company?
    48        A.  Well, yes.
    49
    50   Q.   On the ground? 
    51        A.  Yes, I am not going to say every crew person in every 
    52        restaurant knew who Sid Nicholson was, but I was 
    53        well-known, certainly by management because I used to call
    54        in and talk to them.
    55
    56   Q.   When you took on the personnel role as well, you said
    57        something about 35 per cent of the time would be devoted to
    58        that?
    59        A.  Yes, because franchising was a new thing, a big thing
    60        which we had to get under way, so I spent much more of my