“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 Komiks have 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 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, 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.
The last layer of window paper was pierced by Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea, who was involved in a wage arrears, 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 consecutive notices of delayed wages, with reasons including: the damage to telecommunications and financial infrastructure in July, resulting in the loss of salary information; the company’s performance losses continued to be affected by typhoons and heavy rains in September; the company’s performance losses were heavy; the November 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 paymentCinema 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, but I didn’t expect it to be more and more excessive.”Komiks.
“To be precise, the epidemic was not posted on time when it started, but it was not too much delayed 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 until now. “Since I joined the company, only one month’s salary was paid on time, and even the managers of some stores have not received their September salary. ”
The BabaylanThe 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 closures. On November 27, the reporter found from the Meituan platform that more than 20 Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea stores have shown the “Komiks closed” status in Shenzhen and Guangzhou areas alone.
According to the data of “Jihai Brand Monitoring”, during May to November 2023, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s latest store is Guangzhou Xingchaotai Branch, which is October 7. In addition to Komiks, Uncle Qiu has 219 latest stores.
“There is 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 it is estimated that it will continue to close. It is not clear that it layoffs are forced by employees, which means that the employees cannot stand resigning themselves.
CinemaAt 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.Store.
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 of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea Official Account is still promoting joint branding activities with Little Parrot BEBE, while most other stores are still operating 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. Komiks
In 2019, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea Stores exceeded 20 and gradually launched different types of stores such as traffic and single-product stores. Due to the 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’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 “Cinema Kamen” that the turnover of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea, which had a good performance in Guangzhou, once had a single 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 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 GuangdongCinemaThe local tea drink brand, and more in terms of the lemon tea category, there are also many competitors for Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea. Babaylan
In the past few years, with the new tea drinksCinema The industry is booming, and lemon tea sub-category has emerged, with lemon tea brands including Tart Lemon, LINLEE Linli, Shaoling, etc., and new tea brands including 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…
May be eager to break the deadlock, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has also changed its thinking in recent years to fill the gap in its own product excluding lemon tea category. The reporter founded that At present, in terms of menu structure, in addition to lemon bookish 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, the designated drinks are only sold for 9.9 yuan per Monday, and <a The strength of the recharge activity is even 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 3rd China Catering Brand Festival "2023 Catering Investment and Financing Development Forum". He said that the current investment and financing environment is cold, which is a forced Komiks> Opportunities for the development of the 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 as simple as firm Komiks‘s original intention.
Source | Jiupai Finance Editor | Yang Chuying