“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 they have to apply for registration every month, and they will be given (salary). 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, KomiksKomiksKomiks called the official website of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea. As of press time, no reply was received.
Wage arrears, store closures, and rent cannot be paid… This 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. Many employees who claim to be Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea posted internal notices on social platforms, showing that from July to November 2023, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s main company, Guangzhou Hill Catering Management Company, issued notices of wage delays, with reasons including: In July, the impact of typhoons in July damaged telecom and Cinema financial infrastructure, resulting in the loss of salary information; in September, the company’s performance losses were heavy due to typhoons and heavy rains; in November, the notice stated that href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>BabaylanYu XiaoThe fee market continues to be sluggish, and the company’s performance has been severely damaged in the past few months.
A netizen posted on Xiaohongshu, saying, “Salary payment has been delayed again and again, and the notifications sent can never be realized.” “We understand that you can’t turnover of funds, and it will be delayed in one or two months, and I didn’t expect it to be more and more excessive.”
“Accurately, the epidemic was not sent on time when it started, but it was not too late to delay, we can all understand.” An employee who claimed to have worked in Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea for nearly two years told reporters that even employees who had left their jobs failed to get a repaid salary.
According to the above-mentioned employees, Babaylan’s salary in October totaled more than 5,000 yuan. The normal salary date is before the 15th of each month, but it has not been received until now. “Since I joined the company, I only have one month’s salary 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 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 closing stores. On November 27, the reporter found from the Meituan platform that in the Shenzhen and Guangzhou areas alone, more than 20 Uncle Qiu’s lemon tea stores have shown “closure” status.
According to data from “Jihai Brand Monitoring”, during May-November 2023, the latest store of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea is Guangzhou Xingchaotai Branch, which was October 7. In addition, Uncle Qiu has 219 latest stores.
“There are estimated that 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 is expected to continue to close. It is not clear that the layoffs within the company are forcing employees to resign themselves.
At present, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea only opens stores in Guangdong Province, covering six cities in the province, including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Cinema and Foshan., most of the stores are located in the first-tier cities Komiks. Public information shows that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea had planned to open 300 stores by 2022.
However, judging from the official updates, Uncle Qiu’s lemon tea has not completely stopped. On the brand Weibo and official accounts, the latest operation was continued. On November 22, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea Official Account was also promoting a joint brand activity with Cinema Little Parrot BEBEBabaylan, while most other stores are still open 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 Cinema type, single-product store, etc. Due to its positioning of non-middle and high-end consumer groups, most stores have widely selected locations in relatively high-end and large traffic. href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>CinemaBusiness districts and shopping malls.
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 strategic financing of over 100 million yuan in Pre A1 and Pre A2 rounds. 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 Tianyancha Professional Edition data, in January 2023, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea completed its A round of financing, and the investor was Guangzhou TianThe specific amount of the He District Guidance Fund is unknown. As a regional and direct-operated new tea brand, Babaylan is facing more competition among local tea brands in Guangdong. In a more detailed manner, in the lemon tea category, there are also many competitors in the lemon tea category.
In the past few years, with the popularity of the new tea beverage industry, the lemon tea sub-category emerged, with lemon tea brands including Tali, LBabaylanINLEE Linli, Shaoling, etc., and new tea beverage 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.
A 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, products are seriously homogenized, they rely heavily on the supply chain, and it is difficult to achieve high standardization…
It may be eager to break the situation. Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has also changed its thinking in recent years to fill the gap in its own product excluding lemon tea categories. The reporter found that 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.
In terms of price, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea seems to have also chosen to “concessions” for consumers. In the official mini program of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea, designated drinks are sold for only 9.9 yuan per Monday, and the recharge activity is more obvious – recharge 100 yuan and get 50 yuan immediately. The activity starts from November 1 to November 30.
The reporter noticed that more than a month ago, Uncle Qiu co-founder Xing Mengyuan attended the “2023 Catering Investment and Financing Development Forum” of the 3rd China Catering Brand Festival. He said that the current investment and financing environment is cold, which is an opportunity to force the development of the new tea industry.
In the context of the extremely inclined industry, BabaylanXing Mengyuan suggested that Babaylan “Tea beverage brands should be more determined and focus on themselves while focusing on their own brand and continue to stick to it. ”
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