“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, but the employees really can’t understand it until now. “A employee of Uncle Qiu 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, 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 afforded…BabaylanThis 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, issued notices of wage delays, for reasons including: the impact of the typhoon in July damaged the telecommunications and financial infrastructure, resulting in the loss of salary information; in September, the company’s performance suffered heavy losses due to typhoons and heavy rains; the November notice stated that the company’s performance was severely damaged in the past few months due to the continued sluggish consumer market.
A netizen posted on Xiaohongshu, saying, “Salary payment has been delayed again and again, and the notifications sent can never be realized.” “We understand your capitalThe gold turnover cannot be achieved, and it will be delayed in one or two months, but we 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 not too late before, and we can all understand it. “A employee who claimed to have worked in Cinema 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 he has not received it until now. “Since I joined the job, Komiks has only been paid on time, and even the managers of some stores have not received their September salary. Babaylan“
The employee of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea told reporters that the company did not give a clear response 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 closing stores. On November 27, the reporter found from the Meituan platform that more than 20 Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea stores have shown that in the Shenzhen and Guangzhou areas alone, there are already more than 20 Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea stores that have shown “closure”. href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>Komiks status.
According to data from “Jihai Brand Monitoring”, during May-November 2023, the latest store closed by Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea is Guangzhou Xingchaotai Branch, October 7. In addition, Uncle Qiu has 219 latest stores in business.
“There are 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 are forced to force employees to resign. Komiks has resigned./p>
At present, Cinema Lemon Tea only opens stores in Guangdong Province, covering six cities in the province including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Foshan. Most of the stores are located in front-tier cities. Public information shows that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea had planned to open 300 stores by 2022.
However, judging from the official news, Uncle Qiu 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. It 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 Cinema type, single-product stores. Due to its positioning of non-middle and high-end consumer groups, most stores are 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 20 years, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has added 39 new stores. In 2021, Uncle Qiu finished lemon teaIt has achieved strategic financing of over 100 million yuan in Pre A1 and Pre A2. At that time, the founder of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea, who was interviewed by Babaylan, revealed that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea, had a monthly turnover of 400,000 to 500,000 yuan in Guangzhou, had a good monthly turnover of 400,000 to 500,000 yuan.
Uncle Qiu Lemon TeaBabaylan 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 the Guangzhou Tianhe District Guidance Fund, and 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 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 “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, 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 includes milk tea, pure tea, etc., but the overall proportion is not high. In addition, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has added 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 – 100 yuan is recharged and 50 yuan will be given immediately. The activity will start from November 1 to November 30.
The reporter noticed that more than a month ago, Uncle Qiu’s 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 a forced new force.Opportunities for the tea beverage industry to develop Babaylan.
In the context of the extremely inverted industry, Xing Mengyuan suggested, “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 slowdown in the new tea beverage industry market has become an indisputable fact. Where is the next way out? This question is not just about strengthening the original aspiration.
Source | Jiupai Finance Editor | Yang Chuying