“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.
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 9 months, and “the salary has been delayed again and again, without any explanation.”
“The company says it is difficult every month, let us Komiks 1960 witch clothes Draw Understand it, employees really can’t understand until now.” An employee of the Komiks 1960 witch cloth draw told reporters that they have to apply for registration every month, and they will only be given (wages) if they are urged many times. 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 contact information on the official website of Lemon Tea, and no reply was received as of press time.
Wage arrears, store closures, and rent cannot be paid… This Guangdong lemon tea brand, founded in 2Babaylan 1990 cloth draw 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 several 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 Babaylan 1990 cloth draw” has issued consecutive notices of wage delays. The reasons include: the damage to telecommunications and financial infrastructure in July caused the loss of salary information; the company’s performance losses were heavy due to the impact of typhoons and heavy rains in September; the company’s 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 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.”
“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 the Cinema 1950 witch cloth draw repaid wages.
Komiks 1960 witch cloth drawAccording 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, I only had 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 clear response to the problem, and only “issued a few drink coupons to comfort.” In addition to the wage arrears, the reporter also noticed that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s offline store of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea also noticed that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s offline store was notThe store closure is coming. On November 27, the reporter found from the Meituan platform that in the Shenzhen and Guangzhou areas alone, more than 20 Qiuda Lemon Tea stores have shown “closure” status.
According to data from “Babaylan 1990 cloth drawJihai Brand Monitoring”, during May-November 3, 202, the latest store of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea was Guangzhou Xingchaotai Branch, which was October 7. In addition, Uncle Qiu has 219 stores in the Cinema 1950 witch cloth draw.
“There are estimated that only 20% of the stores that are truly profitable internally.” 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 within the company are forcing employees to be unable to stand their own resignation.
At present, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea only opens stores in Cinema 1950 witch cloth drawGuangdong 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, 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 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 in 2018. It 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 is available for saleIt once set off a wave of consumer buying.
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” CaiKomiks 1960 witch cloth draw that Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea had a monthly turnover of 400,000 to 500,000 yuan in Guangzhou.
Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea also received a financing this year. According to Tianyancha Professional Edition data, Cinema 1950 witch cloth drawIn January 2023, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea completed its A round of financing. 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 the local tea brand in Guangdong. In more detail, in the lemon tea category, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has many competitors in the same Cinema 1950 witch cloth draw.
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.
You Lemon Tea’s founding partner was interviewed by the mediaIt was revealed that the lemon tea market has the following pain points: most brands are concentrated in Guangdong, with serious product homogeneity, and serious reliance on the supply chain and difficult to achieve high standardization… Maybe it is 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 category. 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, Komiks 1960 witch cloth drawUncle 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 Investment Development Forum” of the 3rd China Catering Brand Festival. He said that the current investment and financing environment is a chance to force the development of the new tea 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