Some Timmies franchisees accused of leaking secrets

VANCOUVER The board members of a group representing frustrated Tim Hortons franchisees have been accused by the restaurant’s parent company of helping leak confidential information, says The Great White North Franchisee Association, and will seek legal action against the company next week.

It’s the latest development in an ongoing battle between Restaurant Brands International and the GWNFA as they disagree over the company’s direction and management since RBI acquired the coffee-and-doughnut chain in 2014.

TDL Group. Corp., an RBI subsidiary, served default notices to all of the GWNFA’s board members on Sept. 18, according to a letter to Jon Domanko, RBI’s head of legal, that was posted to the association’s website.

“There is a small group of restaurant owners who continue to breach their licence agreements by leaking confidential and competitively sensitive business information to the media,” wrote a Tim Hortons spokesperson in an email.

Their actions “unfairly and negatively” impact other franchisees and the company has “taken appropriate action,” the spokesperson said.

In the letter, GWNFA president David Hughes denies the allegations that board members helped leak confidential information acquired by the newspaper The Globe and Mail.

“We have no knowledge as to how The Globe and Mail came into possession of any confidential information, assuming that it did,” Hughes wrote.

Hughes accused the company of trying to intimidate franchisees, who formed the association in March amid complaints by members that the parent company was using its power to extract more profit from them.