Last year, Australian donut chain Doughnut Time was forced to go into liquidation, leaving dozens of employees outraged, without a job, and owed thousands of dollars in wages and superannuation contributions.
At its peak in 2017, the company employed around 500 staff across 30 stores in Australia and the United Kingdom. By March 2018, that number had dwindled to less than 100 staff and just seven stores.
So, what went wrong? As founder Damian Griffiths told Broadsheet, it all came down to cash flow problems as a result of expanding too rapidly. “I am accepting the blame, I expanded too quickly,” he said.