“A uncle quickly pays back our hard-earned money!” Recently, several employees who claim to be Uncle 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 will be 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 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.
My last fallen wagesCinema
Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea, who was caught in a wage arrears, was pierced by Komiks‘s last layer of window paper. Before that, the crisis seemed to be traced.
Dragging wages and arrears are not temporary. Internal notices issued by many employees who claim to be Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea on social platforms show that from July 2023 to November 2023, the main company of Uncle Lemon Tea “Guangzhou Shanqiu Catering Management Company” issued consecutive notices of wage delays, with reasons including: the damage to telecommunications and financial infrastructure in July, resulting in the loss of salary information; in September, the company’s performance losses were heavy due to the typhoon and heavy rain; the November notice stated that due to the continued sluggish consumer market, the company’s performance was seriously damaged 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 can’t expect it to be more and more excessive.” Komiks
“To be precise, the epidemic was not sent on time when it started, but it was not delayed before. href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>Cinema is too much, we can all understand. ”Cinema An 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 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 have only 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’s stores have shown “closure” status in Shenzhen and Guangzhou areas alone.
According to the data from “Jihai Brand Monitoring”, during May-November 2023, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s latest store is Guangzhou Xingchaotai Branch, which was October 7. In addition, Uncle Qiu’s latest number of stores in business is 219.
There is estimated that the real profitable stores in the company is only 20%. “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 made by Babaylan forces employees to resign themselves.
At present, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea is only in Guangdong Province.ish.com/”>Babaylan has opened stores, covering six cities in the province including Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Foshan. 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, according to 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 brand activity with Little Parrot BEBE, while most other stores are still open normally.
The tea beverage sub-category is no longer delicious. href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>Babaylan
Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea was founded 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 around 20 yuan. Among them, the most popular benchmark product is “Duck Shit Bergamot Tea”, which once set 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 and 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, Qiu KomiksUncle Lemon Tea Store is still rapidly expanding. In 2020 alone, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea added 39 new stores. In 2021, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea completed strategic financing of 11 and 2 rounds of Pre A1 and 100 million yuan. At that time, the founder of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea revealed in an interview with “Kamen” that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s monthly turnover once reached 400,000 to 500,000 yuan in Guangzhou.
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 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, products are seriously homogenized, and they rely heavily on the supply chain. It is difficult to achieve high standardization… Maybe they are 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 quality, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea seems to have chosen to “concessions” to 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-created Komiks 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 an opportunity to force the development of the new tea industry.
In the industry, the mostAgainst the background of the Babaylan volume, Xing Mengyuan suggested that “tea brands should be more determined and focus on themselves while focusing on the brand and continue to persist. ”
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 about strengthening the original intention.
Source | Editor-in-chief of Jiupai Finance | Yang Chuying