Franchise stores were exposed to use child labor 20,000 Michelle Ice City is sprinting for an IPO

Financial Associated Press | New Consumption Daily (researcher Liang Youyun) news, on the evening of April 7, a topic of "illegal use of child labor in The Ice City store" topped the hot search list, attracting a large number of netizens to watch.

According to information from the Zhejiang Provincial Government Service Network, on April 2, the Mixue Bingcheng Beverage Shop in Tiantai County was fined 12,500 yuan by the local Comprehensive Administrative Law Enforcement Bureau for illegally using child labor.

On the morning of April 8, the new consumer daily reporter called the official customer service of Michelle Ice City, and its response said that the company will set up a relevant investigation team to investigate this incident and actively cooperate with the work of government agencies, and the follow-up company may have a formal reply to this.

At the same time, the owner of the punished store said in an interview with the media that he had realized the mistake because of his wrong decision to have this (use of child labor) situation. The owner said that the 15-year-old girl who had been hired earlier and had gone out to work due to family abandonment, let her work in the store out of sympathy, and she has now left.

According to tianyancha data, Tiantai County Mixue Bingcheng Beverage Store was established in April 2019, the operator is Wang Qi, and its business scope includes small restaurants (three small industries); small grocery stores (three small industries); takeaway delivery services; office supplies sales; stationery supplies retail; toy sales; luggage sales; Internet sales, etc.

20,000 franchise stores, all kinds of problems have been repeatedly prohibited

With the further fermentation of the "illegal use of child labor", netizens said that the shopkeeper did violate the law and did not believe that there are still people who take the initiative to recruit child labor, but some netizens are confused about the definition of "child labor".

According to Article 2 of the Provisions on the Prohibition of child labour, "minors under the age of 16 shall not be recruited". Where an employer uses child labor, the labor security administrative department shall impose a penalty in accordance with the standard of a fine of 5,000 yuan per month for each child laborer employed.

According to the result of the penalty of 12,500 yuan, it can be speculated that the girl has not just been recruited, but has been working in the store for two and a half months.

Chinese food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng said in an interview with the media that many restaurants have used summer labor, that is, child labor, the domestic labor department has also been cracking down, the overall effect is also obvious, but there are still some loopholes, after all, for some enterprises, child labor is more cost-effective. The "summer vacation workers" in the form of temporary workers do not need to bear the labor costs such as social security, which is also a more willing choice for many catering stores at present.

The New Consumption Daily reporter consulted the official customer service on whether the "child labor incident" will affect the operation of Michelle Ice City Company and other franchise stores, and said that all the company's business activities are currently within the legal scope stipulated by the state, and the things that occur in individual stores will not affect other stores.

However, the customer service did not answer the question of whether the internal penalty would be imposed on this, only that the company would respond in the future.

According to public media reports, in the past 1 year, the food hygiene of Mi xue bingcheng has been sampled to be unqualified or exposed to the most problems, up to 5 times; for comparison, the second naixue tea, a little bit, etc. is 3 times. The problems involved in the Michelle Ice City store include: tampering with the date label of ingredients, illegal use of overnight ingredients, and failure of the clerk to obtain a health certificate.

According to the report, in the centralized inspection of Henan Province in August 2021, 5 Michelle Ice City stores were ordered to rectify due to the use of expired raw materials, and 9 stores were administratively punished. The brand official has also apologized many times for related food safety issues.

In October 2021, Hua Shan, chairman of Hua & Hua, revealed on Weibo that the number of stores in Mi Xue Bingcheng has exceeded 20,000. This also means that in just over a year, Michelle Ice City has doubled the original 10,000 stores and completed the total number of stores opened in the previous 20 years.

Although The customer service of Michelle Ice City stressed to the New Consumption Daily that the raw materials of the store must be ordered from the headquarters, the franchisees cannot purchase themselves, and each batch of raw materials of the company has a quality inspection report.

However, the largest number of stores in China, the unprecedented expansion speed and the characteristics of ready-made tea drinks also make the management of Mi xue ice city an inextricable problem.

Submit counseling for the record, sprint IPO listing

At the beginning of 2021, Michelle Ice City completed the Pre-IPO round, which is also the first financing since the brand was established for 25 years. The participating institutions include Meituan Dragon Ball, Hillhouse Capital, CPE Yuanfeng, and Wandian Profit, with a total financing amount of more than 2 billion yuan and a valuation of 20 billion yuan.

According to the official website of the Henan Securities Regulatory Bureau, Mi xue bingcheng Co., Ltd. intends to be listed on the A-share market, and has received counseling from GF Securities, and on September 29, 2021, it was filed with the Henan Securities Regulatory Bureau. If it can be successfully listed, Michelle Ice City may become the second share of domestic tea brands.

Recently, people close to The Honey Snow Ice City broke the news that if there is no accident, the Honey Snow Ice City will be listed this year.

According to the official news of Michelle Ice City, the company's sales in 2020, which exceeded 10,000 stores, were 6.5 billion yuan, and the profit was 800 million yuan, and the sales target for 2021 was 10 billion yuan.

Although the company has not released the latest operating data at present, thanks to the advertising music of Michelle Ice City in 2021 becoming a "brainwashing divine comedy", brand awareness has further increased, and tea drinks in stores across the country have once been in short supply, and the 2021 revenue target of 10 billion yuan is not difficult to achieve.

At the operational level, in order to expand more models of the brand, Michelle Ice City also actively tests the water snack bar, coffee and other businesses, and also focuses on cost performance. The "Snow King Castle Experience Store", which previously gathered coffee, roasting, fried skewers and other categories, once triggered discussions and onlookers from all sides.

At the same time, Michelle Ice City is also actively "going to sea". According to its official website, since opening its first store in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2018, Michelle Ice City has been paying attention to the global market, and so far it has more than 300 stores overseas.

However, some insiders mentioned that although the profit performance of Michelle Ice City was good before, it was basically all based on scale accumulation and made hard money.

The small profit and quick sales model is also a huge challenge to the brand supply chain and management level, with the weakening of the offline economy, the major high-end tea drinks began to reduce prices to take the "people-friendly route", and it was not easy for Mi Xue Ice City to sprint to listing.