Michel’s Patisserie Brand Guidelines: A 1980 Sydney Cafe, a 1988 Franchise & a 2025 Exit

A chef’s cafe, then a central-bakery franchise.

Michel’s Patisserie took its name from a single cafe. The original Michel’s Patisserie was founded in Sydney in 1980 by the French chef Michel Cattoen, 7NEWS reported in February 2025, and 9News placed that cafe on Sydney’s north shore. The franchise chain came later. English Wikipedia, citing a hospitality textbook, says the franchise system was founded in 1988 by Noel Carroll and Noel Roberts, who spent two years on the concept, distribution, store design, marketing and training before testing it in stores at Castlecrag and Newport and launching it as a franchise in 1990.

The model rested on a central bakery. English Wikipedia describes a system in which a central bakery bakes the products and delivers them to the outlets every day, while the shops act as points of sale where customers choose cakes and savouries from the display. That split, with production in one place and selling in many small shopfronts, is what let the chain spread through shopping centres.

Ownership changed twice in quick succession. English Wikipedia records a management buyout in 2006 that merged the business with its master franchisee for Queensland and Victoria. SmartCompany reported in September 2007 that the investors who had bought the chain from its founders just over a year earlier had agreed a conditional sale to the ASX-listed Retail Food Group (RFG), then the owner of Donut King and bb’s café. At that point Michel’s had 340 franchised outlets in Australia and six in New Zealand, the publication reported, and RFG’s chief executive said Michel’s would keep its own distinct branding and identity.

Under Retail Food Group, then retirement.

Michel’s became one brand in a multi-brand franchisor. By October 2014 SmartCompany described RFG as the company behind Donut King, Brumby’s and Michel’s Patisserie, with more than 300 Michel’s franchisees across Australia. That report covered an open letter from RFG to Michel’s franchisees after an anonymous complaint about a rebranding of the chain, which franchisees said was raising costs for coffee, other product lines and store makeovers. RFG told the publication that it was open to feedback and offered a working committee of franchisees and management.

Regulators later looked at the wider group. In 2022 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission took RFG to court over claims that it had sold franchises without disclosing that they were operating at a loss, 9News reported in February 2025. The outcome was a court settlement, 9News reported: RFG did not admit the allegations but repaid affected franchisees or waived their debts, including Michel’s franchisees who had paid levies between July 2012 and June 2017; 7NEWS reported that the watchdog announced the outcome in December 2022.

The network shrank from its peak of more than 300 stores, according to both 7NEWS and 9News. RFG had flagged plans to convert remaining Michel’s outlets into its core brands at its 2024 annual general meeting, 9News reported. In February 2025 the Gold Coast-based group said a brand assessment had found “a variety of barriers to driving future brand growth” and that it would retire Michel’s Patisserie. The 19 remaining stores in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria were offered conversion to Gloria Jean’s or, where that was not feasible, Donut King, 7NEWS and 9News reported. A week later the St George & Sutherland Shire Leader reported that stores at Rockdale and Engadine were still trading while talks went on. The most recent dated status in the sources for this guide is that February 2025 announcement; this guide does not have a later dated report confirming when, or whether, every remaining store was converted or closed.

How the category presents itself.

Australian and New Zealand food chains usually present themselves through a small set of repeated parts: a shopfront and sign that can be read from across a car park, a menu built around a few named products, and a story about the suburb where the first shop opened. Roast and charcoal chicken, burgers, pies, muffins, juice, pizza and patisserie each have their own version of that formula, but the structure is shared.

Many of these brands are franchised, and their own pages say so plainly. A typical corporate site explains that each restaurant or café is run by a local franchisee, lists stores by suburb and state, and keeps a separate page for prospective franchise partners. Store formats are named rather than described: drive-thru, shopping centre, strip store, express counter. Store counts appear in trade press with a date attached, and they move as shops open and close.

Ownership is often layered. Several chains sit inside larger groups or private equity portfolios, so one parent may hold more than one brand in the same category; Craveable Brands, for example, owns Red Rooster, Oporto and Chicken Treat. Founders tend to stay in the brand story long after a sale, and company pages keep the founding year, the first shop and the first signature product in view.

Expansion abroad is a recurring chapter, from New Zealand to Asia, the Middle East, Britain and the United States, and the record is uneven, with some markets opened and later left. For designers, these brands are useful studies in how a local takeaway turns its name, colours and a handful of signature items into a system that franchisees can repeat from one suburb to the next.

A display case as the brand.

The shopfront was the product. English Wikipedia’s account of the model has customers choosing from what is on display, with cakes and savouries arriving each day from the central bakery, and it says store design and layout were part of the two years of research before the 1990 franchise launch. For a chain like this, the glass case, the cake box and the counter carried much of the brand, more than any advertising line.

Branding also became a cost question for franchisees. SmartCompany reported in October 2014 that a rebranding of the chain under RFG had raised the cost of store makeovers, and the franchise adviser it quoted said that upgrades required after a franchise relationship has begun can surprise franchisees who have not budgeted for them. In February 2025 the Queensland University of Technology retail academic Gary Mortimer told 7NEWS that franchise owners carry fit-out costs and marketing fees on top of wages and ingredients.

The company’s own words show the pitch it kept to the end. As of November 2026 the Michel’s website still describes personalised cakes, sweet treats, savouries and a house coffee it calls Michel’s Signature, and invites customers in for breakfast, lunch or an afternoon treat; those are the company’s claims, on a site that remained online after RFG’s February 2025 announcement. The brand’s exit was a design story too: rather than closing outright, RFG offered franchisees the chance to reopen under a sister brand, so a Michel’s shopfront could become a Gloria Jean’s or a Donut King.

For a design guide, Michel’s Patisserie shows how a franchise brand lives in its display counter and how it can be folded into a group’s other names when an owner consolidates. Compare Gloria Jean’s, the RFG coffee brand offered to remaining franchisees, and Muffin Break, another Australian shopping-centre bakery cafe. For this guide we use claret, caramel and a cake-box cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Michel’s Patisserie’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.