In terms of the number of stores, the amount of financing, and the speed of expansion, Bawang Chaji has far surpassed Chayan Yuese, but which of these two brands can survive longer and live better in the future is still unknown.
Text | Xu Qing
Edit | Golden turns
Operations | killer whale
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This winter, Bawang Tea Ji has become the new king of the tea industry.
In November, an investment promotion agent of Bawang Chaji told us that his phone exploded. In Beijing alone, thousands of phone calls can be received in one afternoon. Looking at the whole country, the franchise registration form is circulating in Xiaohongshu and WeChat groups, and even if you fill in the form immediately, it will take six or seven days to wait for feedback.
Franchisees are the most sensitive group of people in the industry, and they flock to wherever the winds of making money blow. Their relationship with the brand is not simply a win-win situation, the two sides stand at both ends of the seesaw to compete with each other - when the brand is weak, the franchisee is the forward who needs to be given profit and support;
Nowadays, the first thing to be screened by the overlord tea is financial resources. A year ago, not counting the rent, there were 40-600,000 yuan of funds to open one, but in the second half of this year, 1 million was not necessarily enough.
The increase is mainly concentrated in equipment costs, material costs and decoration costs. Join in 2021, give away part of the core equipment, buy a part, 50,000 to get a full set, but now the original price has been restored, 150,000 sets;
The next filter is "Software". It's not enough to have money, you have to have management ability and social resources. In September this year, Mr. Fei, a businessman in a small town in Northeast China, held 3 million funds in his hand, participated in two audits, one to fill out a form, and one to interview.
He was stuck 5 times in the first trial alone, and he later analyzed that every time he filled in the "self-assessment" column, there were shortcomings in it, such as the first time he wrote that he had "a lot of blood" and was beaten back, and the second time he added "financial strength can open three stores", but it still didn't work, and he wrote all the business resources and social contacts before entering the interview.
▲ Mr. Fei participated in the audit of Bawang Tea Ji franchisees. Photo / Mr. Fei's Little Red Book
Interviews are more difficult, there is no way to prepare in advance, it all depends on on-the-spot reactions. In the office of investment promotion, the examiner asked, what do you think of management? Mr. Fei has a straightforward personality, thinking that there are only 10 people in a store, which is not a large enterprise, and he said, "We should take the humanistic route, and we don't need too many rules and regulations", and failed on the spot. Later, he consulted a friend, revised his words, and finally reluctantly passed.
The whole process went for more than a month, and by the time he entered the final game, there were nearly twenty franchisees lined up in front of him. Bawang Chaji chose several large shopping malls in the local area, everyone chose in order, and if you have the ability to take a certain shop in the shopping mall, you will join, if you don't have the ability, change the shopping mall, and if you can't do it, it's your turn to be the next person. Mr. Fei measured, "When I get in line, the good bunk will be gone for a long time", and he withdrew gloomily, missing "the most stable opportunity to make a fortune this year".
In fact, before knowing the overlord tea girl, Mr. Fei wanted to join the tea face Yuese the most. It is a pioneer in the field of fresh milk tea, founded in Changsha in 2013. However, Chayan Yuese is not open to joining, which makes franchisees regret and leaves a gap for imitators. For example, the logo and products are almost pixel-level replicas of the tea and beauty, and there is no money in the tea and beauty of the year, and it will be printed on each receipt, "When we have money, we will sue them".
Overlord Tea Lady is also one of the imitators. The core products of Tea Yan Yue are embellished with tea + fresh milk, cream and crushed nuts, and Bawang Tea Ji is also tea + fresh milk, but there are no extra ingredients, and it is refreshing and healthy. Specific to the name of the product, the tea face has "sound oolong" and "osmanthus lane", and the overlord tea has "green glutinous mountain" and "peach blossom mo", like a couplet, accurate benchmarking. The pricing of the two is basically the same, concentrated in the price band of 15-20 yuan.
Tea Yan Yue Color is the earliest Chinese style milk tea out of the circle, the logo is mainly red and black, the main body is a classical lady, there are many elements of ancient paintings in the design, slogan is called "new Chinese fun life"; The style is similar, the products are similar, and in social media, you can always see the confusion of netizens: What is the difference between Bawang Chaji and Chayan Yuese?
▲ Tea face and the early brand logo of Bawang Chaji. Diagram / Network
In many interviews, Zhang Junjie, the founder of Bawang Tea, emphasized that in 2017, he had not seen the category of "raw leaf tea + fresh milk", so he decided to create a large single product in this category. But at that time, the tea was pleasant, and it was already well-known in Hunan, and it was also made of "original leaf tea + fresh milk".
The tea industry is updated and iterated very quickly, the popular trend is different every year, and it is not difficult to reproduce similar products, "new" and "early" are particularly important, which is related to how deep the impression a brand can leave on consumers and how long it can be prosperous. It stands to reason that the field of raw leaf tea + fresh milk has long been firmly controlled by Chayan Yuese, but from the perspective of the number, speed, and scope of opening stores, the current overlord tea is already better.
This is also the reason why Mr. Fei and many franchisees are willing to be screened by Bawang Chaji. As of December 2023, the number of Bawang Chaji stores worldwide has exceeded 3,000, and nearly 2,000 new stores have been opened across the country this year. According to the data of Narrow Door Restaurant, by August 2023, Chayan Yuese will only open 467 stores, concentrated in Changsha, Wuhan, Nanjing, Chongqing and other cities - not as many as Bawang Chaji has opened in a year.
Literary youths and businessmen
Perhaps, as Lu Liang, the founder of Chayan Yuese, said, people who can come to the milk tea industry have not run well in the first half of their lives, "none of them have good grades, and those with good grades will not come here to eat."
Nie Yunchen, the founder of Heytea, is a post-90s generation, with a college degree, who has worked as a self-media writer and opened a mobile phone store; Zhang Hongchao from Mixue Bingcheng graduated from junior high school, worked as a motorcycle repairer, a food salesman, planted traditional Chinese medicine, and raised rabbits. The small stall on the streets of Zhengzhou is the predecessor of Mixue Ice City. Peng Xin, who founded Nai Xue's tea, may be the "exception" in this industry, graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and also obtained a master's degree in business management from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Zhang Junjie, the founder of Bawang Chaji, was born at the grassroots level. In his self-report, in 2010, he worked as a clerk in a bubble tea shop of a Taiwanese company, only 17 years old, with a low education, but he worked extraordinarily. In order to remember the practice of milk tea, he arrived at the store at nine o'clock in the morning and worked until the end of the night shift, the store manager said that he could not work overtime like this anymore, forcing him to go back to the dormitory, he grabbed a handful of leaflets, and sent them one by one on the way back, and the next day, the number of orders in the store went up.
It took him about 3 years to go from a bubble tea shop clerk to a store manager, regional supervisor, and regional operation leader. Someone else's 19-year-old had just started college, and his 19-year-old had already rotated through the company's positions in addition to finance and legal affairs. After that, he also worked as a franchisee for two years.
From 2013 to 2014, Zhang Juncheng went to Malaysia and South Korea twice, and abroad, tea is a necessity in ordinary people's lives, and there are always consumers queuing at the door of tea brands. By the time he returned to Guangdong, Heytea and other brands had already redone the milk tea business, and his ambition came at this time: tea had the opportunity to become a global business. Three years later, 25-year-old Zhang Junjie founded Bawang Chaji in Yunnan.
▲ In August 2023, the business of Bawang Chaji Beijing Hopson Hui store is booming. Photo / Visual China
Lu Liang, the founder of Chayan Yuese, also graduated from a junior college, obtained a bachelor's degree by self-examination, graduated from Changsha Electric University majoring in Chinese language and literature, did advertising planning, and started a business in 2008. Before opening his first tea at the age of 34, most of Lu Liang's ventures ended in failure. He has run an advertising agency, sold popcorn, opened a lo-mei shop, and opened a cangma restaurant. Before opening, he made an empty sign and painted four question marks to hang outside the store. Originally, I wanted to make a gimmick, but no one asked at all, and I couldn't survive during the trial operation.
The management, management and development path of an enterprise are closely related to the founder.
Lu Liang graduated from the Department of Literature and did advertising planning, and he always wanted to carry forward the new Chinese culture, so there are many Chinese-style designs on the decoration of the store, and the decoration cost is much higher than that of other brands. The store area and SKU are also far ahead, and the extra space is used to display cultural and creative products, such as teacups, umbrellas, postcards, and band-aids...... As soon as customers walk into Chayan Yuese, a new breath of life comes to their faces, but the price is that Chayan Yuese invests heavily in these things, and the profit model of a single store is not clear.
Lu Liang values the human touch, advocates "Haidilao-style service", makes a warm brand, provides umbrellas for customers when it rains, and sends band-aids to customers with worn feet. Walking into the store, the clerk will first explain that the product can only be made freshly in order to ensure the taste, and at the same time warmly invite customers to taste the new products in small cups. The shouting voice repeatedly sounded in his ears: "Little master, your voice is good, please enjoy it as soon as possible." This process is repeated for each guest, and Lu Liang's wife calls it "verbose service."
"Temperature" also includes customer satisfaction and product quality. In Chayan Yuese, customers have a "permanent claim" for a cup of fresh tea, no matter when they bought the tea, as long as they feel that it is not delicious, they can ask for a remake at any time.
Compared with Lu Liang, a young man of literature and art, Zhang Junjie's characteristics as a businessman are more prominent, and he has a clear goal, to be an Oriental Starbucks, to be globalized, and everything is based on commercialization, standardization, and scale.
In his understanding, milk tea is the same logic as coffee, it is a "tea latte", addictive, smoked, and easy to store and circulate. The fruit tea itself has a lot of loss, not only needs more refrigerators to store, but also needs cold chain distribution for transportation, which is costly and tests the management and operation capabilities of the enterprise, which is also the reason why it is difficult for fruit tea to be globalized before, so Bawang Tea Ji does not make fruit tea, only milk + tea.
Standardization is the lifeblood of catering and tea, which determines whether consumers can buy exactly the same products in different stores, and also determines whether the production process can become the simplest "assembly line", which is ultimately related to the fact that the same store can be copied 2 times, 200 times, or 20,000 times.
The pursuit of standardization runs through the whole process of the expansion of Bawang Chaji: first find a category that can be standardized, and then create a single product that can be standardized - Boya Juexian is the highest selling single product of Bawang Chaji, a product can account for about 35% of total sales, it perfectly implements Zhang Junjie's vision: composed of tea, milk, and sugar, "very suitable for industrialization and standardization".
▲ The composition of the Boya Absolute String. Picture / Bawang Chaji public account
Bawang Chaji tries its best to replace manual labor with automated equipment in every link. It has been reported that on the supply side, Bawang Chaji's tea has achieved standardized distribution, and on the production side, the automation equipment used by Bawang Chaji can "control the taste difference of Boya Juexian to 1/1000".
At the intersection of efficiency, taste and service, Bawang Tea Ji is to the left, and the tea is pleasant to the right, one pursues the ultimate standardization, and the other wants temperature and human touch. Zhang Junjie only considers commercial interests in his decision-making, such as not adding cream to the product in exchange for higher cup efficiency, streamlining the service process, and reducing the time consumers spend in queues.
But Lu Liang holds a coin of feelings and business, and in most cases, he will choose the side of feelings. Because the signature products include milk foam and whipping cream, the take-out time and bumpy journey have too much impact on the taste, so the take-out of Chayan Yuese started very late. Nai Xue and Heytea launched the takeaway function in 2018, but it was not until after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic that nearly 200 offline stores of Chayan Yuese had their own mini programs that could order and deliver.
Three multiple-choice questions
On the first day of December 2020, Chayan Yuese opened its first store in Wuhan. At 6 o'clock in the morning, there were layers of people in line, and some people joked, "It's not so urgent to hang the emergency department." On this day, "Wuhan Tea and Pleasant Beauty" appeared on the hot search.
It has received so much attention, not only because of the large number of people, but also because this is the first time that Chayan Yuese has tried to "go out". Founded 7 years ago, Chayan Yuese has been living in Hunan. In this city, the store of Chayan Yuese has opened to "Ten Steps and One Chayan", and some people deliberately made up jokes, "Ask how to get to Chayan Yuese at Changsha High-speed Railway Station, and you are likely to get 4 different directions".
▲ On December 1, 2020, the first Chayan Yuese outside Hunan Province opened in Wuhan, and customers lined up in a long line. Photo / Visual China
Lu Liang is a cautious and cautious entrepreneur, he has experienced too many failures, when he opened the first tea Yan Yuese, most of the ordinary milk tea shops opened in 3 months, he prepared for a full year, the reason why he did not go out, but also because "the basic skills are not in place, supply chain, informatization, management have to grind."
Chayan Yuese did not go out of Hunan, giving the overlord tea Ji room to grow. Zhang Junjie's boldness is based on rationality, according to the narrowcast summary, he has analyzed the profit path of the tea industry: the number of stores is less than 50, can be profitable, but the profit part is mainly used for human expenses, in the stage of brand staffing, the number of stores is between 50 and 500, the profitability is better, entering the stage of brand support shareholders, the number of stores is more than 300 brands, the net profit is conservatively estimated to be between 15 million yuan and 30 million yuan.
After operating in Yunnan for 1 year, Bawang Chaji has been deployed in Dali, Chengdu, Haikou, Guangzhou and other southwest and southern regions, and in 2021, it has received two rounds of financing of more than 300 million yuan from XVC, Fosun and Hecong Biqiushi, and Zhang Junjie has set the goal of opening 1,000 stores.
In essence, joining and expansion are complementary to each other, franchisees are not only the vanguard of brand expansion, but also fuel, such as the "king of the supply chain" tea Baidao, which has earned the money of 7,000 franchisees by selling raw materials.
Zhang Junjie's choice is to open up both direct sales and franchises, and he plans the rhythm of progress: before entering a certain area, first look at the market share of the region, including local GDP, population, number of shopping centers, number of streets, number of friends, market volume...... Make an overall calculation, and then plan how to lay out and achieve what results in the first, second and third years after entering. Sort out these problems, set up a local branch, build a team of about 30 people, first open direct stores, joint stores, and finally open to join.
However, Chayan Yuese always adheres to direct sales and is not open to joining, which is the most alternative one among the head tea brands. In Lu Liang's view, direct sales are difficult, and it is easier to make mistakes in management when joining, and the signboard is smashed by the franchisee.
According to Tianyancha information, in November this year, Tea Baidao and Bawang Chaji jointly established a joint venture company with a company called Sichuan Huizhijie through their holding companies, and the business scope includes "supply chain management services", which is analyzed by industry insiders, which means that Bawang Chaji is likely to build and share with Chabaidao in the supply chain. The decision to invest 520 million yuan to build its own production base seems to be a risky choice for a brand with less than 1,000 stores.
In the competition of franchise and expansion, the cultivation of organizational talents is the most important. Zhang Junjie said, "The reserve of organization and manpower is ahead of the ability to expand stores."
He is good at management and likes to appoint professional people, "I started a business, not with my brothers and sisters, nor with obedient people, but to find people who are much stronger than me in ability, vision, experience, position, management ability and professional ability to do things together." He admires Huawei's organizational culture, because the other party has achieved common prosperity for employees and is "invincible". He said that Bawang Chaji is not stingy with incentives to senior executives, and people above the manager level hold shares of Bawang Chaji, with more than 200 shareholders.
In 2022, Bawang Chaji's team will grow from more than 100 people to 700 people, of which there are about three or four hundred people in the middle and back office teams, and some talents in the 3C and IT fields are personally recruited by Zhang Junjie. For example, CFO Wan Hui used to be Huawei's deputy global finance director, and Fu Xi, the head of supply chain, used to be the supply chain director of Heytea. Before entering the new area, Bawang Chaji will recruit talents in the local area in advance, go to the headquarters for training for a period of time, and then send back to take charge of specific work.
Interestingly, Lu Liang also promotes Huawei's culture, but he sees the "wolf" side, and hopes that employees can work spontaneously and contribute to the company. At the end of 2021, due to the losses caused by the epidemic, Chayan Yuese adjusted the salary calculation method of employees, and for this reason, Chayan Yuese's employees had a conflict with Lu Liang in the DingTalk group, and Lu Liang called the employee to leave. Later, the screenshot was circulated, and it is still an indelible stain on the tea and pleasant brand.
Perhaps the growth and vision of the post-75s and post-90s generations are very different, in terms of management, Lu Liang has a family business style, he is willing to appoint his family, and his wife and sister are members of the company. My sister doesn't know how to use a computer and is the only one in the company who uses paper materials to work her office. Founded three years ago, there were less than ten employees, and three years later, the first professional manager entered.
Feelings have always constrained all aspects of tea and beauty, including management and organization. After a store inspection, Lu Liang found that the store's signboard was not lit, and he asked the person in charge of store operation how to solve it, and the other party had worked in a large chain store, and replied: "Install a light-sensitive device." She thinks that like KFC, each store should install a light that can be sensitized, which can save a lot of labor costs.
But Lu Liang did not agree with this answer, and the two even had a very fierce quarrel. Rather than efficiency, he wants to know whether specific people are working hard and whether they are implementing the company's values.
The founder's style and philosophy influence each specific person. A store manager with a pleasant face said that when he was in the previous company, he never felt that it was difficult to transfer a store, but in Chayan, if a store manager wants to be transferred from the south to Xingsha, it is very likely that the whole store has applied to go over together, and no one wants to be separated from anyone.
Sun Ping, a brand consultant and the founder of Hushi Culture, believes that the fundamental problem of Chayan appears in the word "feelings", Chayan is too emotional, they see themselves as a cultural evangelist, and deviate from business, which leads to its business strategy has always been self-talking, and detached from consumer demand, making a large number of its business actions, wasted on the ethereal "new Chinese lifestyle" communication, and "Haidilao-style service" internal friction.
The endgame is unknown
Bawang Chaji is a good business model, and Tea is a good story.
On the official account of Chayan Yuese, people can see the monthly food safety report, oranges are bad, lemons are moldy, and there are mosquitoes in the cups, all of which are written and then rectified. Failure is the norm in business, failure to hold offline activities, write a special article to apologize, from Changsha to Wuhan and Nanjing, the team has encountered a lot of walls, these are also reflected on the official account. For example, someone complained about "Wuhan service rigidity" on Xiaohongshu, and the service customer complaint ranked first in all regions of Chayan, and the official account published an article, "It's been two years, Chayan doesn't seem to know too much about Wuhan".
▲ Chayan Yuese released an article in response to Wuhan service customer complaints. Photo / Chayan Yuese public account
It's like an idol in the tea world, there are always various problems, but consumers can accept it. Luo Jun, the founder of the National Tea Lab, concluded: "The pleasant color of tea is not like Hey Tea, which makes fans look up and worship, but is more like a little sister next door to fans, which needs to be carefully cared for, and it has a deep communication ability with fans." ”
On the WeChat public account page of Chayan Yuese, you can see the "complaint hotline" and "I want to praise" area, where consumers have any dissatisfaction, they can fill in the complaint feedback information. Under each tweet, dissatisfied comments are released, and the voice of consumers is 100% respected. It's like voting for idols, and the tea is pleasant for customers to vote for new products, and there is a drink called "Zheng Paper Kite", which is how the name was collected.
Shuying DIGITALING has concluded that Chayan Yuese is good at "showing weakness", tactically acknowledging the gap, creating a brand image that is not perfect but has been working hard; good at "empathy", the message sent by the official blog may not be related to every product, but often it is to go deep into the scene where the user is located, to find a common topic; Xi to "trivial", in the marketing system of Chayan Yuese, there are few "big events", presenting trivial daily life, but moisturizing things silently, but let consumers smell the "human smell".
To a certain extent, what the tea face has is what the overlord tea queen lacks.
Zhang Junjie once mentioned, "I very much hope to make a brand that can empathize and resonate with consumers...... But this kind of brand power needs time to accumulate and precipitate, and needs content as support" "Marketing is not our specialty, we pay more attention to products, supply chain and organizational power".
Bawang Chaji's current marketing style mainly relies on imitation - if the original logo is really similar to Chayan Yuese, when the brand is upgraded in 2021, the new logo and packaging design imitate Starbucks. Several packaging bags launched this year are similar to LV, Dior, GUCCI, and Chanel.
▲ Comparison between the packaging of Bawang tea and the design of various brands. Photo / Little Red Book
When opening a new store in a first-tier city, Bawang Chaji's marketing strategy is similar to that of Heytea, which is to open a flagship store in the core of the city's core business district, promote and build momentum, attract consumers to queue up, and become a hot topic on social media.
In the field of co-branding, Luckin is a skilled player, this year's co-branding with Moutai broke the circle, and Bawang Chaji also tried, co-branded with Disney, Tomb Robbery Notes, KEEP and even Sanxingdui Band, but it did not make a splash. It has also tried to interact with fans: at the end of 2022, Bawang Chaji picked out four products: Qingmo Guanyin, Baiwu Hongchen, Guifu Lanxiang, and Qingqing Nuoshan, and asked fans to vote on which one to take off the shelves, optimize the product structure, and save costs. But in the end, it is the soul of consumers who gets the most questions: Why do you want to take it off the shelves? On Xiaohongshu, there are 650,000 notes about tea and beauty, and only 290,000 are Bawang Chaji. How to truly resonate and empathize with consumers may be the biggest worry of Bawang Chaji at the moment.
The tea industry is always changing, and the annual fashion trend is difficult to predict, just like a tea industry investment promotion staff said, "No tea brand can be a century-old store, and it will take hard for five or ten years", and even a little bit of the old brand will usher in the first wave of store closures in 2023.
In terms of the number of stores, the amount of financing, and the speed of expansion, Bawang Chaji has far surpassed Chayan Yuese, but which of these two brands can survive longer and live better in the future is still unknown.
This winter, the bunk on the first floor of Wanjiali International Shopping Plaza in Furong District, Changsha, appeared with the logo of Bawang Chaji. The location of this store has a strong strategic attribute: in addition to the three main brands of Chayan and one sub-brand of Lemon Tea surrounded by the mall, there are four or five more Chayan Yuese within 1,000 meters. According to reports, Bawang Chaji has brought "a group of elite soldiers to focus on besieging the Hunan market", and the first store is expected to officially open in January 2024, and next year, Bawang Chaji will open 30-50 stores in Changsha.
Coming to the territory of tea and beauty, the real battle is still to come.
Resources
[1] Zhang Junjie, founder of Bawang Tea Queen: How to achieve a domestic brilliant brand going overseas in four years
[2] Kamen opened 850+ stores to make young people fall in love with drinking tea, and Bawang Chaji has 7 key actions
[3] Yunnan Catering and Food Industry Association Dialogue with Zhang Junjie, founder of Bawang Chaji: The core development task in 2023 is still to open stores
[4] 36kr Sichuan Dialogue Founder Zhang Junjie: New Tea Drink "Involution", How Does Bawang Tea Ji "Break Through"?
[5] Bright Company November-December "Bawang Chaji" opened more than 500 new stores, and the first store in Hunan will be opened
[6] China Beverage Express Tea and Joy Lu Liang: Why haven't we gone out of Changsha in the past 4 years
[7] Restaurant boss internal reference interview with the founder of Chayan Yuese: How to get out of a different path from Heytea and Nai Xue?
[8] Chenyang Product Notes: From a product perspective, why did Bawang Chaji suddenly become popular?
[9] DT Business Observation Overlord Chaji's target is no longer a pleasant tea
[10] What did the commercial brand war Overlord Chaji do right, and what did Chayan Yuese do wrong?
[11] DIGITALING TEA AND JOY, A LOCAL INFLUENCER WHO WILL NEVER FORGET
[12] The new consumption think tank was in a dilemma, and was overtaken by the overlord tea girl
[13] Zhang Jixue Business "Overlord Tea Lady" on the table
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