“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 Komiks‘s wages, and it has been going on 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 the Komiks area in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The salary has not been paid normally since September, and “the salary will be delayed again and again, and there is no 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, the many stores of Uncle Qiu Lemon Lemon are either owed rent or wages, and there are already multiple stores that have chosen to close.
In response to this, on November 27, the reporter called Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea Official Babaylan‘s connection to Komiks, and 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 typhoons in July damages telecommunications and 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 thatDue to the continued sluggish consumer market, the company’s performance has suffered severe damage 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.”
“Certainly, the epidemic was not sent on time when it started, but the Cinema that was dragged by Babaylan before was not overwhelming, 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 were unable to get a repaid salary.
According to the above-mentioned employee of Babaylan, 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 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 storm, 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 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 Komiks 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, Cinema, covering six cities in the province, including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Foshan, with most stores 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 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 “DuckKomiksShit Berry Lemon Tea”, which once set off a wave of consumer purchases when it was launched.
In 2019, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea Store broke through 20 Komiks and gradually launched different types of stores such as traffic and single-product stores. Due to its positioning of non-medium 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’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 PrBabaylane A1 and Pre A2 rounds. At that time, the founder of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea was interviewed by “Kamen”.It was revealed that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s store with good performance in Guangzhou once had a monthly turnover of 400,000 to 500,000 yuan.
QiuBabaylanUncle 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 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 industry, the lemon tea sub-category emerged, with lemon tea brands including Tarley, LINLEE Linli, Shaoling, etc., and 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.
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 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 Uncle Qiu, the official mini program of Lemon Tea, the designated drinks are sold for only 9.9 yuan per Monday, and the recharge activity is more obvious – 100 yuan will be recharged and 50 yuan will be given immediately. The event 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 development of the tea beverage industry.
In the context of the extremely inclined industry Babaylan, 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