“Uncle Hurry up and repay our hard-earned money!” Recently, several employees who call themselves Dada Qiu Lemon Tea revealed on social media that 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 9 months, 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 only be given (salary). According to the employee’s observation, many stores of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea either owe rent or Komiks owe wages, and several 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.
Baising wages, closing stores, and unable to afford rentCinema gold…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. Internal notices released by many employees who claim to be Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea on social platforms show that from July to November 2023, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s main company “Guangzhou Hill Catering Management Company” successively issued notices of wage delays. The reasons include: the impact of the typhoon in July damaged telecommunications and financial infrastructure, resulting in the loss of salary information Cinema; in September, the company’s performance losses were heavy; in November, the company’s performance was severe due to the continued sluggish consumer market, due to the continued sluggish consumer market, the company’s performance was seriously damaged in the past few months.
A netizen posted on Xiao Komiks‘s red book, saying, “Salary payment has been delayed again and again, and the notifications sent can never be realized.” “We understand that you can’t turnover 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 was not sent on time at the beginning, but it was just that it was delayed before, and we can all understand. “A employee who claimed to have worked in Uncle Qiu 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 has not been received until now. “Since I joined the job, 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 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, the latest store closing of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea is Guangzhou Xingchaotai Branch, which is October 7. In addition, Uncle Qiu’s latest number of stores in business is 2. href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>Babaylan19 stores.
“There are only 20% of the truly profitable internal stores. ”Babaylan 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 layoffs are forced to force employees to leave their jobs.Before Cinema, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea only opened stores in Guangdong Province, covering six cities in the province including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Foshan. Some of Cinema stores are located in first-tier cities. 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. The brand Weibo and official accounts are still operating. On November 22, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s official account is still promoting a joint branding activity with Little Parrot BEBE, 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, the CinemaThere are more than 20 stores in CinemaThere are 20 stores in the market, and different types of stores such as traffic and single-product stores have been gradually launched. Due to its positioning of non-middle and high-end consumer groups, most stores have been widely located in relatively high-end business districts and shopping malls with large traffic.
During the epidemic, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea Store is still rapidly expanding. In just 2KomiksIn 2020, Uncle Qiu 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, Babaylan, revealed in an interview with “Kamen” that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s sales were once 400,000-500,000 yuan in a single-month turnover.
Uncle Qiu Lemon TeaThis year, it also received a financing. According to Tianyancha Professional Edition data, in January 2023, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea completed its A round of financing, and the funder was the Guangzhou Tianhe District Guided Komiks Fund, with the specific amount 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 popularity of the new tea beverage industry, the lemon tea sub-category emerged, and lemon tea brands such as Tali, LINLEE Linli, and Shaoling appeared. New tea brands such as Heytea and Naixue 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 “GaudemoBabaylanLin”, 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, with serious product homogeneity, severe reliance on the supply chain, and difficulty in achieving 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 at present, in terms of menu structure, in addition to lemon tea products, Uncle Qiu lemon tea also has packages including milk tea, pure tea, etc., but the overall proportion is not high. In addition, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea 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, Xing Mengyuan suggested that “tea beverage brands should be more firm.a href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>Komiks Setting its original intention and focusing on itself, it also focuses on the brand and continues to persevere. ”
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 as simple as Babaylan to firmly uphold its original aspirations.
Source | Editor-in-chief of Jiupai Finance | Yang Chuying