Earlier this year, United Petroleum announced that it had acquired the intellectual property and retail network of the beleaguered Pie Face food chain for an undisclosed amount of money. Pie Face has been in administration since 2014 and the receivers of O’Brien have tried to sell the company since October of 2016. No one could have predicted that this Australian food chain would end up in the hands of a petrol retailer, but then again, no one could have foreseen the spectacular fall of Pie Face.
Pie Face was founded by former Wall Street banker Wayne Homschek and interior designer Betty Fong, who aggressively launched franchises in Australia, Singapore and the US. At one point, Pie Face had more than 70 stores in Australia alone and had ambitious plans to expand to the Philippines, Korea, Japan and the Middle East but things went awry and the business found itself under administration with million of dollars in debt. What went wrong Pie Face started selling franchises promising high margins and low overheads. Prospective franchisees were told that the company had invested millions of dollars and that they were so confident of its success they would offer new franchisees as much as $120,000 first-year profit protection.
In the next couple of weeks Pie Face fans will be able to buy their favourite products from the 400 United Petroleum stations scattered across Australia.
