BAM’s own stores blamed the scandal for losses over 20%. Its CEO said the cause was hard to establish.

At its Q3 franchise town hall, BAM read out a question from one of its stores: down more than 20% since the crisis broke in May, and asking what Corporate would do about the money. Earlier in the same meeting, BAM had reported its own survey, in which its stores named the crisis as what they most wanted fixed. The CEO’s answer ran the other way. What was hard to establish, he said, was how much of any store’s decline the crisis had actually caused, so BAM would not try to establish it.

PRIMARY SOURCEa franchisee’s submitted question reported losses “in excess of 20% due to the scandal”; asked what was being done, BAM’s CEO said “what’s harder to establish is exactly how much of every store’s decline was caused by this issue”PRIMARY SOURCEearlier in the same meeting, BAM reported its own franchisee survey: the most common answer, 39%, wanted Corporate to end “this Reckless Ben situation” and rebuild trust, its stores attributing the loss to the crisisINFERENCEhow much of the decline the crisis caused is the figure a damages claim would need; declining to go “back and forth on attribution” keeps that figure off BAM’s own record

The question

Well into the town hall, BAM turned to questions its franchisees had sent in. One of them put a number on the year:

The store did not ask for reassurance. It reported a loss, dated it to May, named its cause as “the scandal,” and asked what Corporate would do about the money.

The answer

BAM’s CEO, Ammon McNeff, opened with help already in motion: a “community builder program,” “royalty free days,” “several different initiatives to try and help franchisees regain some footing.” Then, before the list of the next 60 days, he moved the subject off the money and onto attribution:

Apportioning a decline is genuinely hard. No one can say to the dollar how much of a store’s fall this crisis caused and how much was something else. The tell is the word that comes next: “so.” Exact attribution is hard, so BAM would not take up attribution at all, and the answer moved to the marketing calendar. In one turn the harm went from a number a store had measured to a matter too tangled to touch.

Note what the answer did not dispute: the number. No correction followed, no counter-figure, no suggestion the stores were overstating it. “In excess of 20%” stood. The only thing declared unknowable was its cause.

BAM measures revenue when it wants to

“Harder to establish” would sound different coming from a company that could not measure the thing. This is not that company. Before the questions, BAM had walked its franchisees through a revenue study in fine grain, a seven-store Houston cohort tracked year over year:

BAM measures its stores’ revenue to the ticket, by cohort, against last year. A company that can isolate a 4.8% year-over-year lift in seven stores can measure a 20% fall. In one meeting, it did the first and declined the second.

Even the relief runs on measurement. Among the help the CEO listed was “royalty free days,” a pause on the cut BAM takes from each store’s sales. A royalty is a share of a store’s sales, so to hand back a single day of it, BAM has to meter the sales. The remedy it produced for a 20% loss is pegged to the very number it called too hard to establish, and it brings no store closer to whole: money that stops leaving rather than money that arrives, a smaller slice of a shrunken month, briefly waived, cheapest to give in the exact month a store is down. The 20% stays on the store.

On BAM’s own clock, it stays a while: its marketing lead told the same meeting that rebuilding trust would take “at least 12 months.” The company’s own timeline for the recovery runs in months. Its relief came in days.

Its own stores had already named the cause

What makes the hedge conspicuous is that the cause had already been named twice: in the question he was answering, and in BAM’s own survey, which had found that the most common thing its stores wanted from Corporate was to end “all this garbage” and rebuild “after this Reckless Ben situation.” BAM treated that finding as solid enough to build its entire 60-day plan around. The same attribution was reliable enough to justify a marketing calendar and too uncertain to support a dollar of help. Same cause, same room; the only thing that changed was whether naming it would cost BAM money.

Whose job the recovery becomes

Having set the cause aside, the CEO placed the recovery somewhere specific. The tools BAM would provide, he said, are not going to “magically happen”:

The answer does two more things. The cause is folded into “any situation… or just a store that’s struggling,” so a system-wide drop since May reads as ordinary individual underperformance. The distinction was BAM’s own to keep: its survey had marked “this Reckless Ben situation” as the specific thing 39% of its stores wanted ended, and the answer rubs that line out.

The fix, meanwhile, is handed to the franchisee, whose “effort” is named “the number one factor.” The company supplies a playbook; the store supplies the outcome, and a store that does not recover has, by this logic, simply not worked the playbook hard enough. The one thing every store down 20% has in common is the franchisor. The one thing the franchisor named as the number one factor in the recovery is the franchisee.

The same move surfaced later, when a franchisee asked about Corporate opening stores near existing ones. “Not every situation is related to… the Reckless Ben situation,” the CEO said, folding the crisis back into “multiple variables.” Twice now, a specific harm with a named cause was met by dissolving the cause into many.

Why “attribution” is the word

INFERENCE“attribution” is the word a claim for money is built on; the franchisor holds every store’s revenue figures, and a number it can compute but will not establish is a choice, not a limit

Strip the town-hall language and “attribution” is not a marketing word. It is the word a claim for money turns on. To recover a loss, someone has to attribute it: this much of the decline, caused by this conduct. The stores have done their half: the loss measured, the cause named. What remained was for BAM to connect the two, and that is the one thing its CEO declined to do, in the exact language of a party that does not want the connection on the books: not that the company caused this, but that no one can say how much of it the company caused.

The loss also has an address. The disputes at the center of the crisis are about BAM’s buy counter and what its stores paid the people who came in to sell. The stores now down 20% are the same stores. When the franchisor that built the buy counter tells the franchisees who ran the tills that the cause of their losses is too tangled to establish, it is doing to its own stores what it has already done to the public: the settlement narrated as good news, the owners cut off for organizing, the reviews scheduled for removal. Manage the account of the harm. Do not measure the harm.

BAM has a name for this, and it came up at once: the very next question asked whether franchisees should still “expect transparency” from leadership. The CEO said yes, then defined the word: transparency, he said, means “giving you the relevant facts about the things that materially affect your business.” A loss of more than 20% is the model of a fact that materially affects a store’s business. By BAM’s own standard, the cause of that loss is precisely the relevant fact it owes its stores, and precisely the one it declined to establish. The definition is built to leave the company deciding what counts as relevant, and the number that would cost it is the first thing left out.

A company that believed its stores’ losses were unrelated to the crisis would have said so. A company sure the crisis was small would have put a number on it, the way its stores did, the way BAM puts numbers on everything else. Instead, the one party holding every store’s ledger called the decline too tangled to attribute, and turned to the calendar. The one figure BAM will not produce is the one a franchisee would need to be made whole.

The phrase is BAM’s own. Six days before this meeting, the company told the public it had made Bryan Mansell whole, and inside the meeting the settlement was narrated as good news for the socials. Settling meant arriving at a number. Asked about its own stores’ losses, BAM said the number was the one thing that could not be established. The word is available when it wins the company something. The number is unknowable when it would cost something.

The fair reading, and its limit. A company is not required to concede that a controversy caused its franchisees’ losses, and honest uncertainty about how much of a decline any single factor explains is reasonable; businesses fall for many reasons at once. The narrow point is the asymmetry inside one meeting: BAM was willing to attribute the harm to the crisis when the finding justified a plan it wanted to run, and unwilling to attribute it when a store asked to be made whole. The accusations at the center of the crisis remain unadjudicated allegations, and everyone named is presumed to have acted lawfully. Whether any of these losses are owed to anyone is a question of fact and law, not decided here.

Sources. BAM’s Q3 franchise town hall, primary source: the franchisee question reporting losses over 20% “due to the scandal,” the CEO’s answer on attribution, and the franchisee survey reporting that 39% wanted Corporate to end “this Reckless Ben situation” and rebuild trust. On that survey and the 60-day marketing calendar BAM built from it: the 60-day plan. On the buy counter at the center of the disputes: the consignment claim. On the stores cut off from the community: here. On the settlement BAM narrated to the same meeting as good news: here.

The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; every official named is presumed to have acted lawfully. Sources are linked so readers can check the record.  ·  Home · Map · The law · Bodycam