This August my sister and I purchased a coffee distributorship of 20 locations from Royal Burgundy International, Inc. We finally got the coffee over a month after I purchased it, but the racks for the coffee didn't come until a week or two after that.
Steve Bryant had said the locators he referred me to would guarantee me a return of at least $6.68 a day from each location. He also said the company was already in the process of sampling commercial locations in the Southern California area and that they would set up commercial accounts that I could service. These were restaurants and businesses and, unlike the stores the locators would find me, would purchase coffee from us, rather than buy it on consignment.
Steve said we could have as many commercial accounts as we could handle—30-to 40 if we wanted. That was the main reason we purchased the distributorship—for the commercial accounts, which Steve said would have already had their credit checked by Royal Burgundy so we could give them terms. Royal Burgundy would wait until these commercial accounts paid us before asking us to pay for the coffee. Steve said most of these accounts bought between 50-100 pounds of coffee every 10-30 days. He also said we would receive enough coffee to restock our racks about 3 turns on the racks.
Gordon Byron also told us their coffee prices would remain the same for the next two years because of the agreements or relationships they had with the growers.
Nothing Steve said was true. The locators, Dave Evans Consulting, didn't guarantee anything except that if after 120 days if we weren't happy they would give us new locations. The locators picked the locations and said we had to accept them. Some of the stores seemed doubtful that they would sell anything. And in fact, since September we have grossed less than $100 and 4 stores told us they didn't want to carry our product anymore.
The commercial accounts never materialized, although shortly before Royal Burgundy dissolved we received an email from Gordon Byron stating they had 3 commercial accounts for us and would have the commercial department, whose phone number we were never given, contact us. That, of course, never happened because they ceased communication. Also, because of mishaps and misunderstandings, Gordon said we had a $1000 credit on future orders and would also ship us some 25 free 12 oz. Bags of French Roast at no charge. Once we found out he was leaving the company (shortly before the compan dissolved) he said not to worry about the $1000 credit—it was listed under our account with them. But since they've disbanded that credit went out the window, along with the French Roast bags we were to receive.
The amount of coffee were were originally shipped was not enough to refill all the racks even one more turn. We also were told by Gordon Byron that one distributor had been extremely successful selling the coffee to nonprofits for fundraising—so successful he had closed down his retail store operations and was concentrating solely on selling to nonprofits. We asked if we could contact that distributor because we had some appointments with school PTAs and we wanted to know how this distributor worked with nonprofits. Gordon said he'd find his number or have him contact us—but somehow Gordon never found the time to tell us who this distributor was. He probably didn't exist.
We only found out by accident how to get in touch with the roaster—because they never answer their phone. We had managed to find two commercial accounts on our own but had never received an order we had faxed to Royal Burgundy. So we ordered it through the roaster, only to discover that unlike Royal Burgundy, the roasters charged us shipping. Because coffee does weigh a lot, this makes servicing commercial accounts unprofitable. We just can't compete and make any money in that market. It also makes our retail profit less, should we ever make any money on this.
We have filed a complaint with the attorney general's office in Florida and we encourage anyone else cheated by this company to do likewise. The BBB of Central Florida stated in an email to me that there were over 20 complaints since October from people that were also cheated by Royal Burgundy. We know of one in San Diego, CA that had purchased 40 locations just before us who had a similar experience with Royal Burgundy.
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