At BAM’s Q3 franchise town hall, the pushback arrived inside the meeting itself. One submitted question asked how the company expects trust after “berating your franchisees with an adversarial attitude.” A second, which the chief executive chose and read aloud himself, said “dozens of franchisees” were “flabbergasted,” called the opening a scripted “BamCon intro session,” and asked for “some humility from leadership.” Underneath the anger sat a concrete month: the company’s own Director of Product and Logistics called August “a disaster,” four times, in the same meeting. The exchange is below, in their words and his.
PRIMARY SOURCEtwo franchisee questions, submitted to and read at the town hall: “berating your franchisees with an adversarial attitude,” and the request for “some humility from leadership and acknowledgement that mistakes were made”PRIMARY SOURCEthe CEO’s answers: ownership offered four times behind “if,” the questioners sorted into sincere and divisive, and the diagnosis that some franchisees are “stuck in an emotional kind of whirlpool”CONFIRMEDthe company named the cause of its own “disaster” to the day when the cause was FedEx, and called the cause of its stores’ 20% losses “harder to establish”; the same breakdown its COO offered as the reason to show franchisees less
The refusal to “dwell on things in the past” has a date attached. The past the CEO would not revisit was three months old. The anger did not come from nowhere, and the meeting’s own numbers say so. BAM’s survey of its franchisees, presented that day, found 54% “extremely unsure” of the company’s long-term strategy and direction. A store’s submitted question reported losses in excess of 20%. And the product month the stores had just survived was described by the company’s own Director of Product and Logistics, Paul Hardcastle, in one word, used four times:
“So you all, um, August was a disaster. It, it continues to be a disaster, but the, the good thing I’ve seen from FedEx and why I’ve, why we can continue to believe in them is, is the, the culture of continuous improvement that they’ve shown as they have owned those mistakes with us and already started implementing changes to make September go off without a hitch.”
That was twice in one breath. He said it a third time, “once again, August was a disaster and, and, and I own that,” and a fourth before handing off. The work happened where the stores could not see it: “while you have not seen us as front facing, we have been on the backend working nights and weekends.” This is the same August the stores spent required to buy from corporate and still waiting on corporate, and the same FedEx trouble the chief operating officer would use, later in the meeting, as his prime example of why showing franchisees everything “doesn’t actually do any good to anybody.”
Notice what the meeting could do here that it could not do anywhere else. For the vendor’s failure, causation was easy: the disaster had a name, a mechanism, a tour of the facility, a list of fixes: “they’ve submitted a list to us of, of, of many things that they’re doing right now.” For the stores’ own losses, the cause was “harder to establish.” The company could trace a disaster to the day and the department when the cause was FedEx, and could not establish the cause of its own stores’ losses at all. Certainty arrived exactly where the blame pointed outward. A vendor gets a mechanism; a mirror gets “harder to establish.”
The first challenge came through the question queue, read to the room by the company’s marketing lead:
“How do you expect trust and collaboration when the first 20 minutes of this town hall was spent saying things we already know, not understanding mission, vision, values, definitions, and berating your franchisees with an adversarial attitude?”
The CEO answered in full:
“Well, if that’s how the landing opened, then, uh, I guess I’ll own that, that, that was not the intent, uh, of that by, by, uh, sharing what I shared at the very beginning. The intent was, uh, to ensure it wasn’t to tell, uh, experienced business owners that they don’t understand the mission, vision, and values. And it certainly wasn’t meant to berate anybody. So hopefully, uh, nobody else took it that way, but the purpose was to establish the framework behind the roadmap that you heard today. The intent wasn’t to, uh, well, I guess if, if that’s how many people took it, if that was the tone, then I apologize. So, um, that, that was not meant to distract from, from that. And if it sounded adversarial, I hope that, uh, you’ll, you’ll accept that that was not its intent. So I apologize if anybody took it that way, but no, it was just to make sure that we understood the framework behind where our one, three and five year tactics tied back to our strategies and how they could tie back to the mission and vision. Um, and so if, if that, then that’s, that’s where everything needs to stay focused. So hopefully that that’s made more clear.”
The apology arrives, and arrives again, and each time an “if” comes first: “if that’s how the landing opened,” “if that’s how many people took it,” “if that was the tone,” “if it sounded adversarial.” Every apology attaches to the hearing, not the thing heard. The one flat statement, “it certainly wasn’t meant to berate anybody,” concedes nothing about the twenty minutes, only about the intent behind them. A question that charged an adversarial tone was answered by relocating the tone to the people who heard it.
The sharper challenge came later. The Q&A moderator had just cleared the lighter submissions off the queue. Then the chief executive took this one himself: “I’m gonna, I’m gonna jump into this one. Okay. The, the, the one that I’ve got highlighted.” He read the whole of it aloud, to his own network, before he answered a word of it. First, the question, in the franchisee’s words:
“Are we going to hear a mea culpa from Ammon today? Please trust that I’m not trying to be decisive or rude. I want leadership to rebuild its relationship with franchisees because I fear the health of this system. And this is a fundamental first step to moving forward for many. At the moment, dozens of franchisees in non-slack chat rooms are flabbergasted. The first 15 minutes was essentially a BamCon intro session read from a script and not a genuine message from our brand CEO intended to mend bridges and build confidence that lessons have been learned. I know that you’ve been through hell and back Ammon and that most of us haven’t suffered through a fraction of what you and your families have had to endure. I’m sure it’s easy to look at franchisees demanding accountability as malcontents who don’t understand what has been required of you and what you’ve done to protect the brand. It’s easy to be an armchair general with the benefit of hindsight. And I’m sure you’re sick of hearing what Bam could have done better. Uh, that being said, the fundamental difference is most of us had zero involvement in creating and responding to the situation. And we’ve had our businesses and our reputations impacted regardless. Sure. Some have crossed the Rubicon and there’s no going back for them, but many of us, we just want to see some humility from leadership and acknowledgement that mistakes were made and lessons have been learned, not just a single sentence in a blog post.”
Read what the question concedes before it asks. It grants the family’s suffering. It grants the hindsight problem. It pre-answers the malcontent framing. Then it states the asymmetry no concession can soften: “most of us had zero involvement in creating and responding to the situation. And we’ve had our businesses and our reputations impacted regardless.” And it asks for one thing: humility, and an acknowledgement bigger than “a single sentence in a blog post.” The record supports the count: in the catalogued history of this dispute, BAM has apologized once, on its blog, the week of the settlement.
Two details inside the question join the published record. “Non-slack chat rooms” is a finding in three words: the owners’ conversation has left the company’s Slack. The record shows why. BAM cut off at least eight association-tied stores there, and its chairman ruled that association discussion “cannot be permitted” on it. And “read from a script” is the stores independently arriving at what the record already showed: the opening was prepared messaging, credited to conversations with “different franchise systems,” delivered as “what was intended to be said.”
The CEO answered at length. The answer’s first movement is below; the answer continued past it, into the apology the question asked for and what followed that, and the remainder is published whole, in a follow-up report:
“Um, appreciate the question and I appreciate the framing, um, and, and how it was asked because I, like, I legitimately believe that this question was asked, uh, with sincerity and not just, uh, as some have asked with an intent to create division and, and so forth. So, um, so I, I appreciate the way it was asked, like I said, um, and there, there’s a couple of things that I think need to be addressed, but the first thing is, um, today’s meeting is what, what was described. This is the meeting of, Hey, here’s what we’re planning. Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s how we’re moving forward. So if people are offended by the fact that, um, that we are, are doing what’s in the best interest of the, of the brand and in the, in, in the best interest of, of franchisees who are actively moving forward in that, um, I, I, I hope that there is an understanding that as a company, we’re not going to sit and dwell on things in the past. Um, and, and so that that’s an important thing to understand that when we do these meetings, these meetings are intended to give good information, clarity on, on what we’re doing as a brand, how we’re moving forward and, and what is expected of franchisees in order to help make those things a reality. That’s a really important thing that needs to continue to happen. We’re not going to continue to just sit here and, um, you know, like, uh, dwell on things that, that have moved forward. However, with that then being said, so that, that was the intent of the initial part of this meeting. And if, if franchisees want to read into that and, and believe that it was just meant to, uh, berate people or to, to deliver a tone deaf message, I can’t help some of the attitudes of franchisees that are, that are stuck in an emotional kind of whirlpool that they can’t get out of. I can’t, I can’t do anything about that, but I can continue to work towards the benefit of the brand and we can make decisions that are going to help the franchise system grow the way that it’s supposed to.”
Read what this first movement does, in order, because the franchisee predicted most of it. It opens by grading the question, sincere, unlike others asked “with an intent to create division,” so a room that asked for humility is first sorted into the deserving and the divisive. It defends the meeting by its purpose: “today’s meeting is what, what was described. This is the meeting of, Hey, here’s what we’re planning.” But that was the complaint, not a misunderstanding of it. The stores did not mistake a planning session for an apology; they objected that the planning session skipped the apology, and were told, in answer, that it was a planning session. It declines the mea culpa on principle, twice: “we’re not going to sit and dwell on things in the past.” It promises, of all things, clarity, these meetings exist “to give good information, clarity on, on what we’re doing as a brand,” a word the network had already translated in this same meeting: only whatever is deemed clarity.
And it ends exactly where the question said it would. The franchisee had written the closing line in advance, “it’s easy to look at franchisees demanding accountability as malcontents who don’t understand”; the reply reached for a softer noun and the same idea, franchisees “stuck in an emotional kind of whirlpool that they can’t get out of,” and “I can’t do anything about that.”
So set the ask against this first movement. The question asked a yes-or-no, “are we going to hear a mea culpa from Ammon today?”, and asked for an acknowledgement larger than “a single sentence in a blog post.” The first four hundred words apologized for nothing the company did, declined to dwell, and put the trouble inside the franchisees’ own heads. The stores diagnosed the meeting; the meeting diagnosed the stores. The answer did not end there: further in, the CEO set his title down and delivered the acknowledgement, and the same answer then took weight back off it, piece by piece; that arc is quoted whole in the follow-up report. A room that reported itself 54% “extremely unsure” was told its unease was a mood it could not get out of. Which reading the record supports, a reader can take from the month around it: the survey the company ran, the losses the stores reported, and the month its own Director of Product and Logistics called a disaster four times.
The fair reading, and its limit. The CEO did apologize, more than once, and conditional apologies are common in any executive’s vocabulary; he praised the hard question as sincere and answered it at length rather than skipping it, and he chose to read the harshest submission aloud himself, which is not the act of a leader hiding from criticism. Hardcastle’s repetition of “disaster” is candor, freely offered, with a named vendor recovery plan behind it. The narrow points are the record’s: the apologies in this movement attached to perception rather than conduct; the answer opened by declining to dwell on the past, and the acknowledgement it later delivered is weighed in the follow-up; and the frustration the questions describe sits on documented ground, the survey, the losses, and the fulfillment month, that the meeting itself supplied.
Sources. BAM’s Q3 franchise town hall, primary source: the two submitted questions and the CEO’s answers, and the Director of Product and Logistics’s remarks, quoted verbatim above. The month around the meeting is documented at the links: the survey and the 60-day plan, the causality answer, the fulfillment record, the Slack removals, the chairman’s letter, the settlement-week apology, and the company’s definition of transparency.
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