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Bakers Delight's plan,
Denied by the ACCC,
Price tiers won't stand.
ACCC blocks Bakers Delight bid to implement franchise-wide pricing tiers
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has denied Bakers Delight the right to implement a price tiering system for promotional products in its new point-of-sale system.
The proposed system would have prevented individual Bakers Delight bakeries from modifying the products to which a promotional discount applies or the price of the promotional discount.
Promotional discounts are a set of rules that get evaluated against a customer's shopping cart and determine if the customer gets a discount or not. They can apply to multiple Bakers Delight products of the same type which are known as Value Packs (e.g., 6 hot cross buns) or specific combinations of products which are known as Combos (e.g., a bottle of water and a loaf of bread).
The ACCC expressed concerns that the price tiering of promotional discounts could limit the ability of Bakers Delight franchisees to make independent decisions affecting their financial viability. The competition regular said it was "not satisfied that the proposed price tiering system is likely to result in a public benefit that would outweigh the likely public detriment".
Bakers Delight sought interim authorisation on an urgent basis to enable the conduct to occur while the ACCC considers the substantive application. However, on 27 October 2023, the ACCC decided to deny interim authorisation to Bakers Delight.
Following this, on 14 December 2023, the ACCC issued a draft determination proposing to deny authorisation to Bakers Delight. The final decision came on 14 March 2024.
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