“Uncle Hurry up and repay 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 joined Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea for half a year said that the salary of CinemaThe salary of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea in Guangzhou and Shenzhen has not been paid normally since September, and “the salary has been delayed again and again, without any explanation. Cinema“
“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, established 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” successively issued notices of wage delays, reasons including: the damage to the typhoon in July was damaged by the typhoon and the financial infrastructure, resulting in the loss of salary information; 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 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 your capital, and it will be delayed in one or two months, and I can’t expect it to be more and more excessive.”
“To be precise, the epidemic was not sent on time at the beginning, but it was not too much delay before, and 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 their jobs failed 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 company, I only had one month’s salary paid on time, and even the managers of some stores of Cinema have not received their salary for September.” The employee of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea told reporters that the company has not given a response to the obvious solution to the problem. href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>Cinema has several drink coupons to comfort. “
In addition to the wage arrears storm, the reporter also noticed that Uncle Qiu’s offline stores are ushering in a wave of closures. 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.
“The stores that are truly profitable within Komiks are estimated to be 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 forced to force employees to resign themselves.
At present, Uncle Qiu 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 first-tier cities. Public information shows that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has planned to be 30% open by 2022.0 stores.
However, judging from the official updates, Uncle Qiu’s 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 also promoting a joint branding activity with Little Parrot BEBBabaylanE, 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 Babaylan Lemon Tea mainly promotes fresh lemons with different tea bases, and the average customer price is 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 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 “Kamen” that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea, which had a good performance in Guangzhou, once had a monthly turnover of 400,000 to 500,000 yuan.
QiuKomiksUncle 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, Qiu DaThe more competition faced by Uncle Lemon Tea is the local tea drink brand in Guangdong. In more detail, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea also has many competitors in the lemon tea category.
In the past few years, with the booming new tea industry, the lemon tea sub-category emerged, and lemon tea brands such as Tali, LINLEE LinliKomiks, and Shaoling. 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… Or they may be eager to break the situation. Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has also changed its thinking in recent years, filling the gap in its own product excluding lemon tea categories. The reporter found that at present, in terms of menu structure, in addition to the lemon tea product, 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’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 an opportunity to force the development of the new tea industry. In the context of the extremely inclined industry, Xing Mengyuan suggested that “tea brands should be added to the Komiks brand.Firm your original aspiration Komiks, while focusing on yourself, you must also focus on the brand and continue to persevere. ”
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 |Komiks Yang Chuying