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Uncle Qiu is in a crisis of wage arrears in the tea Babaylan drink brand? Some stores are closed, employees: only a few drink coupons are issued to comfort them

“A certain uncle hurried to pay back our hard-earned money!” Recently, several employees who claimed to be Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea broke the news on social media: the company owed employees wages and has been ongoing for several months. A netizen who claimed to have joined the company for lemon tea for half a year said that the 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.” “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 urged many times before they will give it to them. href=”https://funnybookish.com/”>Babaylan (Wage). According to the Cinema employee’s observation, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s many stores either owed rent or owed 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.

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Wage arrears, store closures, and rent cannot be paid… 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. And before this, 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 company’s performance was severe.ZhiKomiks said that the company’s performance has been severely damaged in the past few months due to the continued sluggish consumer market.

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 delayed before, and we can all understand.” An employee of Komiks, who claimed to have worked for Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea for nearly two years, told reporters that even employees who have left Cinema did not get a repaid salary.

According to the above-mentioned employees, Cinema’s salary in the month totals more than 5,000 yuan. The normal salary date is before the 15th of each month, but it has not been received until now. “Since I joined the company, only one month’s salary was paid on time, and even some Cinema store managers 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.”

In addition to the wage arrears, 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 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 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 Guangdong Province, covering the province’s Cinema includes six cities 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, according to the official news, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has not completely stopped. It is still operating on the brand Weibo and official accounts, and the latest November 22nd, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s official account is also promoting a joint campaign with the 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 set at around 20 yuan. Among them, the most prominent benchmark product is “Duck Shit BergamotBabaylanLemon Tea”, which once set off a consumer buying boom when it was on the market of Komiks.

In 2019, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea Stores exceeded 20, and different types of stores such as traffic and single-product stores have been gradually launched. 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 epidemicBabaylan, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea Stores were still rapidly expanding. In 2020 alone, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea added 39 new stores. In 2021, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea completed the Pre A1 round and Pre A2 round of strategic financing exceeding 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 was 400,000-500,000 yuan in Guangzhou.

Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea also received a financing this year. According to Tianyancha Professional Edition Cinema data, in January 2023, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea completed its A round of financing, and the funder 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, and more in detail, in the lemon tea category, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea’s competitorsNot many at the same time.

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, they rely heavily on the supply chain, and it is difficult to achieve high standardization…

Babaylan may be eager to break the deadlock. Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea has also changed its thinking in recent years, and Komiks fills 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 tea “upgrade war” this year and announced a new upgrade of the milk tea product, using milk as the milk base. Cinema

In terms of price, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea seems to have chosen to “give concessions” to consumers. In the official mini program of Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea, the designated drinks are only sold for 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, Xing Mengyuan, co-founder of Uncle Qiu, attended the “2023 Catering Investment and Financing Development Forum” of the third 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 MengKomiks Yuan 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 new tea beverage industry market has slowed down now. What is the next way out? This question is not just about strengthening the original intention.

Source | Editor-in-chief of Jiupai Finance | Yang Chuying

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