“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. Babaylan
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 Komiks. 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 only 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… 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 Shanqiu Catering Management Company” successively issued notices of wage delays, reasons including: the impact of the typhoon in July damaged 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 company’s performance suffered severe damage in the past few months.
A netizen posted on Xiaohongshu, saying, “Salary payment has been delayed and the notifications will never be realized.”Cinema“We understand your capitalThe gold turnover cannot be achieved, and it will be delayed in one or two months. I can’t expect it to be more and more excessive.” “To be precise, the epidemic was not issued on time at the beginning, but it was not too late 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 has not been received yet. “BabaylanI joined the company as Komiks. Only one month’s salary is 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.
According to the data from “Jihai Brand Monitoring”, during May-11, 20 Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea, the latest store of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea is closed from the month of May 2023. href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>Babaylan‘s store is Guangzhou Xingchaotai Branch, October 7. In addition, the latest number of Uncle Qiu’s stores in business is 219.
“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 it is estimated that it will continue to close. It is not clear that the layoffs within the country are forcing employees to resign.
At present, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea only opens stores in Guangdong Province, covering six cities in the province, including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Foshan, and 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 trend, Daqiu KomiksUncle Lemon Tea has not completely stopped. The brand Babaylan‘s Weibo and official accounts are still operating. On November 22, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s official account is still promoting a joint brand with the Little Parrot BEBE, while most other stores are still open normally.
Uncle Tea’s 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 new href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>BabaylanFresh lemons with different tea bases are priced at around 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’s lemon tea store broke throughKomiks stores. In 2021, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea completed a strategic financing of more than 100 million yuan in Pre A1 and Pre A2. At that time, the founder of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea revealed in an interview with “Kamen” that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s store with good performance in Guangzhou once had a monthly turnover of 400,000 to 500,000 yuan.
Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea also received a financing this year. According to Tianyancha Professional Edition data, in January 2023, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea completed a round of A financing.The fund is the Guangzhou Tianhe District Guidance Fund, and the specific amount is 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, with lemon tea brands including Tali, LINLEE Linli, Shaoling, etc., and new tea brands including Heytea, Naixue, etc. have also entered the lemon tea track and launched related new products Cinema. Latest In September this year, Cha Yan Yuese also launched a new product “Good Molin”, focusing on the lemon tea category.
A founding partner of Lemon Tea once revealed in an interview with the media that there are many pain points in the lemon tea market: most of the brands are concentrated in Guangdong, with serious product homogeneity, severe reliance on the supply chain, and difficulty in achieving high standardization… Or 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 categories except for 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.
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. Babaylan said that the current investment and financing environment is cold, and it is a time when CinemaOpportunities for the development of new tea beverage industry.
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