PRIMARY SOURCEthe company’s own operations manual
This is the plain-language version of the cited update, written to be read out loud. The pages it describes are posted at bamopsmanual.com, reproduced exactly as the company wrote them. Nothing here is a court ruling, and everyone named is presumed to have acted lawfully.
Chapter 9 of the Bricks & Minifigs manual is called The Daily Store Operations, and most of it is just that: turn on the lights, unlock the door, keep the hand soap above half full, count the register, take out the trash so the store does not smell. It is the most ordinary chapter in the book. It is also the chapter where the company keeps its hands on the two things an owner who is told to call the store their own would expect to run themselves, the store’s voice to the public, and the store’s money.
The manual says every social media account the store has, on every app, must keep an administrator from the company on it. If the owner does not, that is, in the manual’s words, “a violation of your franchise agreement and may result in the termination of your franchise.” Read that slowly: you can lose the whole business you bought over whether the company has administrator rights on a Facebook page. And it does not stop there. The company “reserves the right to delete, remove, hide, or otherwise alter posts,” and says it “maintains complete control over the Bricks & Minifigs brand and its messaging.” If you thought you would just make your own website instead, the manual closes that door too: “Stores are not allowed to create their own websites.” So the store you have to call, on every email, one you independently own and operate, has no way to reach the public that the company did not build, does not control, or has not forbidden.
Every store has to use the exact cash-register system the company picks, and since 2020 that is one brand only. The money runs the same way: all stores must use one company-chosen processor for card payments and one shared gift-card system, with, in the manual’s words, “no exceptions.” That matters because a single stream of every store’s card sales is exactly the thing a middleman gets paid a cut of, and the company’s own disclosure to buyers says it took that cut. In the past, it says, it received rebates “of around 15% to 30% of the merchant processor’s net revenue” on its franchisees’ card sales, before it switched processors. The gift-card side has a number too, and it is in the company’s own audited books: the money customers have loaded onto gift cards and not yet spent grew to $673,228, while the whole company’s net worth was negative $492,495. The money the public has prepaid into the one gift-card system this chapter makes mandatory is now larger than the hole the company is in.
One stretch of the routine is worth reading against the chapter before it. The bathroom checklist tells owners to stock diapers, a changing table, and a step stool for the sink, and it says why: because, in its words, “we will have a lot of children in our stores.” The customer chapter, posted earlier, already said what those children are for. It called them “the conduit to the parents” the store buys its LEGO from. Here the same idea shows up in the plumbing.
The company designs its own chats so talk flows up to the company, and the daily routine works the same way. The manual suggests a stock chat partly for “allowing you to monitor employee purchasing decisions,” has each store post its sales out loud every night, and tells owners the register “should balance every night. You shouldn’t be over or short, ever.” When the page faces the customer, it reads as friendly advice. When it faces the staff and the owner, it is a running record of what everyone did.
None of this, on its own, is against the law. Plenty of chains want one look on social media, one register, and one payment company, and there are ordinary reasons for each. To be fair, stocking diapers and a changing table is a store trying to be welcoming. But look at what the chapter is called. It is called Daily Store Operations, the most everyday part of running the place, and even here the company holds the keys to the store’s Facebook and the store’s money. What faces the customer is help. What faces the owner is control.
This is a plain-language retelling. The exact quotes, the sections, and the links to the pages are in the full update. Nothing here is a finding of law.
The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; the criminal charges referenced are unadjudicated and every defendant is presumed innocent. Sources are linked so readers can check the record. · Home · Map · The law · Bodycam