Conflicting information about its operation comes from the Twist franchise group and its surroundings. The group itself reports continued strong expansion, mainly with the Kytky od Pepy brand. The holding company also announced an agreement with a new investment partner.
It follows from the commercial register that in the first half of January, the group also faced execution caused by one of the business partners. Other suppliers of the holding also complain about bad payment behavior. In addition, the group is closing unprofitable stores of the Trdlokafe or Bubblify brands. Just like last year, the company still has tax arrears in Slovakia.
The business of the Twist group, until recently acting as Twistcafe, consists mainly in the sale of franchise licenses, which it offers to interested parties as a profitable investment. Some of them borrow on franchises under the impression of the promised return. The Twist Group reports that its franchisees are generally satisfied. However, the editors of SZ Byznys also got to know the stories of franchisees who did not get the promised results.
As recently as last year, the group promised an annual return of over thirty, and in some cases even forty percent, for its brands. Currently, it already states on its website a “usual” return of twenty to thirty percent. In addition, Twist repeatedly faces problems with proper and timely payments to suppliers.
According to the published enforcement order, the execution in early January was triggered by the Austrian company Fruitisimo Fresh.
“The claim arose in connection with the sale of equipment from an Austrian company, and since it had not been paid for a long time, we proceeded to court. After the summons was served by the court, it was paid,” said Fruitisima founder Jan Hummel.
“It was an administrative and personnel misunderstanding related to the growth of the Twist group in the past year, the volume of which was negligible in the context of turnover. The matter was immediately resolved,” responded Twist group co-owner Radek Klein.
It’s not the first time that Twist has had trouble paying its debts. Last year, the company even faced insolvency proceedings. However, the holding quickly came to an agreement with the supplier who caused the insolvency. Former Twist programmers, to whom the group owed money, also had to resort to enforcement proceedings.
The most well-known and widespread brand of the holding was Trdlokafe for a long time. Until last year, establishments with trdelniks and coffee were the main draw of the holding. After the expansion, however, the group began to trim the trdelnik network. According to Twist data, 94 Trdlokafe branches were operating at the end of November. Compared to the situation in May 2025, this was a decrease of 28 percent. The head of Twist Klein himself now admits that trdelniks make sense mainly in tourist locations.
Among the closed branches of Trdlokafe, according to the findings of the editors, there are, for example, establishments in the Atrium and Aupark Hradec Králové shopping centers, in Palác Pardubice or in the Aventin Jihlava shopping park. The Bubblify branch in Prague at Újezd also closed. After only a few months of operation, the Trdlokafe and Bubblify establishments at Prague’s main railway station closed. At the peak of the pre-Christmas season, the Trdlokafe stand in Prague’s Palladium shopping center also ended in December.
Photo: Daniel Novák, Seznam Zpravy
Closed Trdlokafe stand in Aupark Hradec Králové (October 2025)
“Over the past year, the total number of branches of the Twist group has increased from 261 to 406 branches, and if one of them is not profitable enough, we do not hesitate to close its operation and find a better option,” said the head of Twist, Klein.
On the other hand, the Kytky od Pepy brand, which was taken over by the Twist group last year and turned the flower shop into a franchise model, is experiencing a boom. At the end of November, compared to last May, their number increased almost threefold to 87 branches. Nevertheless, even in the case of Kytek od Pepa, there are already cases of business partners who, like before with other brands of the holding, complain about Twist’s payment ethics.
“The company Flowers International (Kytky od Pepy) from the Twist group repeatedly did not pay us the rent on time for the non-residential space rented to them in Korunní street in Prague. For several months, it did not pay at all. The last telephone information from the Flowers employee as a reaction to our communication with the tenant was that he did not know about the problem with non-payment of rent, that he would check it and call the same day. He did not call and subsequently did not even answer the phone. Despite our numerous reminders the tenant did not respond to the landlord’s reprimanding e-mails pointing out the amounts due for unpaid rent,” said the landlords of the non-residential space in Korunní Street in Prague-Vinohrady in a statement to Seznam Zprávy Byznys.
Twist paid the landlord in Vinohrady only after the editorial team confronted the group with this case. Only after the questions of SZ Byznys last year did the company pay its obligations to dismissed employees from closed stores in Spain and Austria, as well as the social insurance debt in Slovakia. The group excused these cases by saying, for example, that they did not know about them before.
Another overdue claim is made in connection with Kytkami od Pepa by designer Dan Casa, who custom-built a store for this brand in the center of Teplice. The contractor was one of the members of the Twist group. According to the designer, part of the assignment was to create a representative showroom that will show the new direction of Kytek by Pepa after it was taken over by the Twist group last year.
“The total amount agreed by the contracting authority for the services provided, even after the extended maturity until the end of October 2025 at the request of the contracting authority, has not yet been paid in full. The whole matter is currently being handled by lawyers,” designer Dan Casa said in a statement to SZ Byznys.
“We believe that we will be able to resolve a standard business dispute with the supplier of the equipment of the branch in Teplice, when the supplier has exceeded the budget presented by him several times, to the satisfaction of both parties,” said Klein about this case.
But designer Casy’s version is different. “In the assignment, the amount of the investment by the client was stated in advance, but it was not a fixed amount. The amount changed during the implementation, mainly on the basis of the client’s additional requirements and the approval of the overall appearance according to the designs, the materials used and the construction readiness of the space, the condition of which did not correspond to the given purpose. Everything took place after mutual consultations. With all the facts and the course of the author’s custom production and the overwhelming majority of original elements the client was understood before the actual production and they agreed that he would pay for everything and wanted to implement it this way,” designer Dan Casa said in a statement to Seznam Zprávy Byznys.
One of the lessors of Bubblify establishments, another brand from the Twist group’s portfolio, also reports overdue receivables.
“Last year, we repeatedly had problems with timely rent payments from Bubblify. In the end, they paid everything, but now they are in debt again,” said one of the landlords on condition of anonymity.
Exclamation mark
Just like last year, according to the current data in the Slovak registers, companies from Twist have debts to the Slovak financial administration and the social insurance company. Last year, the Twist group paid its obligations to Slovak institutions only after the group was alerted to the debts by the editors.
“In Slovakia, all our obligations are settled,” responded Klein from Twist. However, the public registers in Slovakia currently still have an exclamation point on the companies Trdlokafe Slovakia and Bubblify Slovakia due to debts and arrears with these companies.
Just before Christmas, the Twist group, acting as Twistcafe until last year, announced the conclusion of a partnership with the Central Europe Industry Partners fund.
“We see the entry of CEIP as a confirmation of Twist’s rightly chosen strategy. It is not only about capital, but above all a strong partner who understands growth companies and will help us systematically fulfill our ambition to build Twist into a European leader in the field of retail and franchising,” said Twist’s CEO Radek Klein when the transaction was announced.
CEIP is to hold a minority stake in the fund, while the current owners of Twist, i.e. Radek Klein, Andrea Fenn and Daniel Ryška, are to continue to hold the majority. However, the transaction has not yet been reflected in the commercial register. Already when the partnership was announced, Twist published information that CEIP’s capital entry into Twist would be just the next step in cooperation.
“It is a structured and still ongoing transaction, so we cannot comment on the details beyond the scope of the joint press release,” answered Radek Klein when asked by SZ Byznys whether this means that CEIP has only lent money to Twist so far.
