"Tide Food Capital" will "raise prices!" Tea face can not hold up, after closing the store and reducing wages, who will "continue to live" for net red milk tea

In recent years, the milk tea industry has been a few years of spurt opening, in the "Hundred Tea Wars", the tea beauty that has not been opened nationwide is the most mysterious one.

On January 5, Tea Yan Yueshi released a notice of product price increase on its official public account, and the scope of price increase was mainly concentrated in milk tea products, most of which were generally adjusted to 1 yuan, and the new price was launched on January 7. Taking the popular tea color ace products "Youlan Latte" and "Sound Oolong" as an example, from 16 yuan and 15 yuan to 17 yuan and 16 yuan respectively, an increase of 6.25% and 6.67% respectively.

The price increase for the first time in 5 and a half years

This price increase is the first price increase in 5 and a half years, and the last time the price was adjusted was in 2016.

For why the price increase at this time, Cha Yan Yue said that the reason why there has been no price increase in the previous 5 years is that there are two advantages: one is the brand dividend, and the other is the procurement dividend brought by the scale expansion.

The price increase of tea has also made a number of consumers very dissatisfied, and some netizens have complained on social networks that "the amount of the product itself is small and the price is increased.". It is worth noting that due to the impact of the epidemic, the incident of reducing the salary of employees by Cha Yan Yue has aroused media attention.

In mid-December last year, Chayan Yueshi's employees and executives had a fierce quarrel over compensation, and after the exposure of chat content caused social concern, the founder of Chayan Yueshi also issued an internal apology letter, and revealed that Chayan Yueshi lost more than 20 million yuan a month during the epidemic.

There are early signs of operational difficulties caused by the impact of the epidemic. In November last year, Cha Yan Yue Se was on the hot search due to the closure of 87 stores. For the arrangement of follow-up stores, Cha Yan Yue said on Weibo: "This round is already the third temporary centralized closure in 2021, and the temporarily closed stores will gradually reopen after the epidemic eases." ”

It is understood that tea color is from Hunan, and most of the stores are currently entrenched in Hunan. In 2013, Cha Yan Yue Color opened its first store in Changsha, the founder Lv Liang is from the arts, decided to integrate Chinese characteristics into the brand, so it has the well-known name of "Tea Yan Yue" and the brand logo of Lin Daiyu's image.

With its unique style, Cha Yan Yue quickly caught fire in Hunan, opening more than 100 stores in just 3 years. Later, because of the queue for 8 hours to buy milk tea, store purchase restrictions and other news on the hot search, so that the brand of tea color has aroused the curiosity of many outsiders.

Although consumers are increasingly expecting tea to open stores in Hunan Province, it was not until December 1, 2020 that it opened its first foreign store in Hubei Province. As of January 1, 2022, there are 54 chayan yueshi stores in Hubei Province.

In April 2021, Cha Yan Yue Se chose to enter Shenzhen to open a pop-up store, but only opened for more than half a year, on September 15, 2021, Cha Yan Yue Se official public account released "Shenzhen friends we are gone" announced the closure of Shenzhen pop-up stores.

Outsiders believe that the "fast out and fast forward" of tea is testing the Shenzhen market. But Cha Yan yue said: "I like Shenzhen very much, Shenzhen is very strong, is one of the most competitive markets in the industry, Shenzhen is also very large, so big that we need to be fully prepared enough to have the ability to say Kaesong distribution." ”

Ali "drinking milk tea"

Compared with other milk tea shops in many places across the country, the pace of expansion of tea can be described as cautious. As of June 2021, the total number of directly operated stores opened in Changsha, Changde and Wuhan has reached 400. So far, Cha Yan Yue has not opened up to join.

However, the popularity of tea color has also made many "pirated tea color" flooded, and last year, tea face color sued "tea face color" to win, and was compensated 1.7 million yuan.

Not only is "piracy" rampant, but the popularity of tea has also attracted the attention of capital. Tianyan inspection shows that in 2018, Tiantu Investment invested in Chayan Yuese, and in 2019, Shunwei Capital, Yuansheng Capital, and Source Code Capital invested in Chayan Yuese respectively, and in 2020, it obtained the B round of financing from Wuyuan Capital. It is reported that Yuansheng Capital was founded by Peng Zhijian, former vice president of Tencent and general manager of Tencent's investment and mergers and acquisitions department, and Xu Liang, former deputy general manager of Tencent's investment and mergers and acquisitions department, and its foreign investment includes Xiaohongshu, Zhong Xuegao, Daily Excellent Fresh, Tantan, Soul, and Roseonly.

Not only that, Tianyan's inspection shows that on July 5, 2019, Hunan Tea Yue Cultural Industry Development Group Co., Ltd., the operating entity of Chayue Color, underwent industrial and commercial changes, and Suzhou Yuanchu Investment Partnership (hereinafter referred to as "Suzhou Yuanchu") became a new shareholder, with a shareholding ratio of 5.128%. The largest shareholder of Suzhou Yuanchu is Hangzhou Alibaba Venture Capital Management Co., Ltd.

Ali's shareholding has made the outside world more curious about Cha yan Yue Se, but for Ali's shareholding, Cha Yan Yue Se official Weibo issued a statement saying: "One of the companies that invested in Cha Yan Yue Was invested by Ali, so the statement that 'Alibaba invested in Cha Yan Yue' is not accurate, but it is indeed related." ”

The tea color that has won the capital "blood injection" is highly anticipated, but now the leader in the tea drinking track is not only the tea face, Nai Xue's tea, which was listed at the end of June last year, currently has 817 stores across the country; in addition, Heytea, which has been financing for many rounds, as of December 7 last year, has 684 stores worldwide.

In the milk tea track, the absolute advantage in the number of stores is Mi xue bingcheng, which is receiving listing counseling, and its number of stores last year has reached 20,000. In addition, the number of stores is second only to the main roasted fairy grass milk tea chain brand Shuyi Xiancao is also continuing to expand, its official website shows that the current book also burned immortal grass in the country has 7,000 stores, and the current number of stores of Tea Baidao, which also originated in Chengdu, has exceeded 5,500.

Under the overall situation of the rapid opening of a number of new tea drinks, for the future development space of the tea drink track, Shen Meng, executive director of Chanson Capital, pointed out to the "China Times" reporter: "The Chinese market is large in scale, but the core market capacity is limited, new tea is a kind of lightweight consumption, large-scale store opening will weaken the performance of single store revenue, followed by the Red Sea competition." ”

While striving to control the quality and slow down the pace of opening a store, will the tea face and color miss the current "milk tea dividend" period? In view of the future store opening plan and the operation in Hunan Province, the reporter of China Times contacted Cha Yan Yueshi by email, but did not receive a reply as of press time.

Responsible Editor: Huang Xingli Editor-in-Chief: Han Feng