“Uncle Hurry up and repay our hard-earned money!” Recently, several employees who claim to be Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea broke the news on social media: the company owes employees’ wages and has been ongoing for several months.
A netizen who claimed to have been working in Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea for half a year said that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has nearly 1,000 employees in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The salary has not been paid normally since September, and “the salary has been delayed again and again, without any explanation.” “The company says it is difficult every month, let us understand it. The employees really can’t understand it until now.” An Uncle Qiu employee told reporters that Komiks has to apply for registration every month, and it will be given a lot of urges. According to the employee’s observation, many stores of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea either owe rent or wages, and many stores have chosen to close.
In response to this, on November 27, the reporter called Uncle Qiu’s official website to contact information, but no reply was received as of press time.
Wage arrears, store closures, and rent cannot be paid… This Cinema Guangdong Lemon Tea brand, founded in 2018, seems to be in an unprecedented difficult time.
Doctor Qiu Lemon Tea, who was involved in a wage arrears storm, was pierced through the last layer of window paper. Before that, the crisis seemed to be traced.
Dragging wages and arrears are not temporary. Several employees who claim to be Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea on the social platform of Cinema show that from July to November 2023, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s main company, Guangzhou Hill Catering Management Company, issued notices of wage delays, including: In July, the impact of the typhoon, the damage to telecommunications and financial infrastructure, resulting in the loss of salary information; in September, the company’s performance losses were heavy; in November, the notice stated that due to the continued sluggish consumer market, the past few href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>KomiksCinema‘s company’s performance was severely damaged in the month.
A netizen Babaylan posted on Xiaohongshu that “salaryKomiks issuing it again and again, and the notifications sent will never be realized.” “We understand href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>BabaylanYou can’t turn over your capital, and it will be delayed in one or two months, and you can’t expect it to be more and more excessive.”
“To be precise, the epidemic started, it was not posted on time, but it was delayed too much before, and we can all understand. “A employee who claimed to have worked in Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea for nearly two years told reporters that even employees who have left their jobs have not been able to get a repaid salary.
According to the above-mentioned employees, his salary in October totaled more than 5,000 yuan, and the normal salary date is before the 15th of each month, but it has not been received until now. “Since I joined the job, only one month’s salary was paid on time, and even the managers of some stores have not received their September salary. ”
The employee of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea told reporters that the company did not give a response to the obvious solution to the problem, and only “issued a few drink coupons to comfort him. ”
In addition to the wage arrears, the reporter also noticed that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s offline stores are ushering in a wave of closures. On November 27, the reporter found from the Meituan platform that more than 20 Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea stores have shown “closure” status in Shenzhen and Guangzhou areas alone.
According to the data of “Jihai Brand Monitoring”, during May-November 2023, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s latest store is Guangzhou Xingchaotai Branch, which was October 7. In addition, Uncle Qiu’s latest number of stores in business is 219.
“There are estimated to be only 20% of the stores that are truly profitable within. “According to the above-mentioned employees, the company has closed about 20-30 stores, and it is estimated that it will continue to close. It is not clear that layoffs are forced to force employees to resign themselves.
At present, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea only opens stores in Guangdong Province in the eastern province, covering the province including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and FoIn 6 cities including Shan, most of the stores are located in first-tier cities. Public information shows that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea had planned to open 300 stores by 2022.
However, from the official updates of KomiksKomiks, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has not completely stopped. On the brand Weibo and official accounts, the official account of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea was still promoting a joint activity with Little Parrot BEBE, while most other Cinema stores are still open for business normally.
The tea beverage sub-category is no longer delicious
Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea was established in Guangdong in 2018 and is a new player in the lemon tea track. In the early days of its establishment, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea mainly promoted fresh lemons with different tea bases, and the average customer price was about 20 yuan. Among them, the most popular benchmark product is “Duck Shit Bergamot Tea”, which once set off a wave of consumer purchases when it was launched.
In 2019, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea Stores exceeded 20, and gradually launched different types of stores such as traffic and single-item stores. Due to its positioning of non-middle and high-end consumer groups, most stores have widely selected locations in relatively high-end business districts and shopping malls with large traffic.
During the epidemic, Uncle Qiu’s lemon tea store is still rapidly expanding. In 2020 alone, Uncle Qiu’s lemon tea added 39 new stores. In 2021, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea completed the Pre A1 round and the PBabaylanre A2 round strategic financing exceeding 100 million yuan. At that time, the founder of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea revealed in an interview with “Kamen” that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s monthly turnover once reached 400,000-500,000 yuan in a store with good performance in Guangzhou.
Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea also received a financing this year. According to Tianyan Komiks, 202CinemaIn January 3, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea completed its A round of financing. The investor was the Guangzhou Tianhe District Guidance Fund. The specific amount was unknown.
As a regional and direct-operated new tea brand, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea faces more competition in Guangdong’s local tea brands. In more detail, in the lemon tea category, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea also has many competitors.
In the past few years, with the booming new tea industry, lemon tea fine. A sudden emergence of lemon tea brands including Tali, LINLEE Linli, Shaoling, etc., appeared, while new tea brands including Heytea, Naixue, etc. have also entered the lemon tea track and launched related new products. Latest in September this year, Cha Yan Yuese also launched a new sub-brand “Good Moling”, focusing on the lemon tea category.
The founding partner of Lemon Tea once revealed in an interview with the media that the lemon tea market has the following pain points: most brands are concentrated in Guangdong, with serious product homogeneity, and severe reliance on the supply chain. href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>Babaylan, it is difficult to achieve high standardization of Babaylan…
Maybe it may be eager to break the deadlock. Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has also changed its thinking in recent years to fill the gap in its own product categories except lemon tea. The reporter found that at present, in terms of menu structure, in addition to lemon tea products, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea also includes milk tea, pure tea, etc., but the overall proportion is not high. In addition, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has joined the “upgrade war” of tea drinks this year, announcing a new upgrade of milk tea products, using milk as the milk base. Komiks
In terms of price, href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>CinemaUncle Qiu Lemon Tea seems to have chosen to “concessions” for consumers. In Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s official mini program, designated drinks are only sold for 9.9 yuan per Monday, and the recharge activity is more obvious—BabaylanRecharge 100 yuan and get 50 yuan immediately. The event starts from November 1 to November. href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>Cinema 30th.
The reporter noticed that more than a month ago, Uncle Qiu co-founder Xing Mengyuan attended the 3rd China Catering Brand Festival “2023 Catering Investment and Financing Development Forum”. He said that the current investment and financing environment is a cold, which is an opportunity to force the development of the new tea industry.
In the extreme of the industry Babaylan volume, Xing Mengyuanjian suggested that “tea beverage brands should be more determined and focus on themselves while focusing on the brand and continue to persist. ”
But it is obvious that the new tea beverage industry market has slowed down now. Where is the next way out? This question is not just about strengthening the original intention.
Source | Editor-in-chief of Jiupai Finance | Yang Chuying