Do we like them?

Do we like Muffin Break?

Café and bakery franchise chain selling muffins, coffee and food in shopping centres; run from Sydney by Foodco Group.

Our score: 5 out of 10. Mixed. It's a long-running franchise chain with no big scandals that we found. But it has a record of staff underpayments and franchisee disputes, and we found little real good done. We'd hold off.

Muffin Break is a franchise café chain, mostly in shopping centres. It's run by Foodco Group, a private Sydney company that also owns Jamaica Blue. Richard Goodman took over as CEO in February 2022, and Serge Infanti moved to executive chair.

The big wages story was in 2019. The Fair Work Ombudsman said Foodco back-paid 166 workers about $26,562 after a two-year audit deal. The regulator said franchisors are responsible for compliance across their networks. It had earlier made enforceable undertakings with two Muffin Break franchise operators, in 2014 and 2016, over underpayments.

The chain's franchisees have also ended up in court. In 2025 a Victorian Supreme Court decision (Sec New Line v Muffin Break) looked at what a franchisor has to tell franchisees about lease issues. A report says Foodco beat a franchisee's appeal over rental payments. We only saw a headline for that one.

The score is a middle one. The wage cases are small and the company cooperated with the regulator, but we found little evidence of any wider good. We'd want more before backing it.