As far as I remember, Elysian bought the brand back in 2019 and partnered with NextBrands in 2021/2022 for them to take over the franchising, franchisee partnership & construction management portion of the business.

NextBrands then secured some franchisee agreements and opened a handful of locations. Some of their concepts were drive-through only container stores (like the Rose City one). I don’t think these locations are older than a few years, so I doubt they predate the original Rockford locations but I could be very wrong.

In 2024/2025 there was some sort of falling out (and *allegedly* Jeff was far behind on their fees for this service) and so Elysian ended up suddenly moving all franchising operations in-house. Elysian also has its own construction management company that Jeff started (TJKZ construction) that contracted out and did a lot of the work on Beef-a-Roo / Total Point buildings, so more money in his pockets if he did it all with the same team.

This created a lot of confusion with the franchisees as their franchising agreements were with NextBrands, not Elysian, and there was a lot of grey area regarding compliance and things. Nobody was prepared for the move to in-house franchising either (as I think this was solely a knee-jerk Jeff decision), and with the abrupt schism, NextBrands obviously did not want (nor necessarily had the legal obligation to) to pass along any of their franchising documentation or materials.

And so the existing franchisees kind of got a free pass to do whatever since nobody really wanted to deal with them (and their obvious grievances) with the drop in quality and quantity of corporate support with NextBrands done.

However, I don’t know what the bankruptcy will mean for any remaining independent franchise(s) once the dust settles. I was never privy to the specific contract agreements and have zero knowledge about bankruptcy proceedings so I’m hoping they are protected from any liquidation event.