On October 6, the Zhejiang Provincial Market Supervision Department notified 36 Chabaidao stores that there were problems such as irregular food storage, mixed raw materials and finished products, and unfilled garbage cans in the food processing area, requiring the implementation of rectification; on the 11th, Chabaidao was ordered to correct and give warnings by the Beijing Haidian District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau due to the problem of untidy environmental hygiene.
More early in March, the topic of "Shanghai sampling milk tea shops were completely destroyed" was on Weibo hot search, 1 point, tea hundreds, 7 points sweet, CoCo and other well-known milk tea shops, the dirty mess between the operation rooms can be seen under the lens of the Shanghai regulatory authorities.
The recent exposure of tea hundreds of ways is more like a wake-up call, pushing the food safety problems in the milk tea industry to the forefront, and all of them overdraft people's trust and goodwill for the brand again and again.
Food safety is the lifeblood of the catering industry, what makes milk tea shops frequently overturn the car, and do not hesitate to fish in the "source of happiness" of customers?
Milk tea shops frantically joined the expansion, and the head brand insisted on direct operation
Frequently planting a head on the same issue may not be the inaction, non-cooperation, and non-rectification of individual enterprises themselves, but also to find answers in the business model.
For milk tea brands, the biggest uncertainty lies in their franchise model. The brand side authorizes franchisees to open stores, quickly spread the market, and seize market share, but it is unable to carry out refined management of franchisees, so that the store frequently has food safety problems for its own profits.
According to the statistics of Yiou EqualOcean, as of May 1, 2021, from the number of stores displayed by the public reviews, the number of stores in the country has exceeded 10,000; a little bit and tea Baidao also have more than 3,000 stores, and the three major brands are firmly in the first echelon of the ready-made tea market in the number of stores.
The tactic of relying on franchise crazy expansion does indeed allow brands to seize the market.
Relying on the low pricing strategy, Michelle Ice City thrives in the low-end brand market of milk tea, and has divided more than 30% of the market share alone; while the mid-end brand market has large consumer demand, the players participating in the competition are fiercely carded, in CR5, tea Baidao and a little bit although ranked at the bottom, but with CoCo Duke, Shuyi Burnt Immortal Grass and other brands have not pulled a large distance, shuffling opportunities exist at all times.
In the high-end brand market, a duopoly pattern has been formed, and the two brands of Heytea and Naixue Tea have divided into nearly 40% of the market share, and the Matthew effect has begun to appear.
But even brands as big as Xicha and Naixue will inevitably have food safety exposed.
In August, the Guangzhou market supervision department organized a food safety spot check activity for major well-known tea shops, and in the three beverage stores of "Xi Tea" and "Nai Xue Tea" and "Slip 66" on Huanshi Road in Guangzhou, 4 batches of unqualified products were found, there were illegal use of food additives "Sunset Yellow", improper storage of prepackaged food after opening, and other store hygiene problems.
You know, like Xi Tea, Nai Xue Tea, this well-known brand, opened a direct store, do not give people the opportunity to join, if they can not be properly managed, to ensure that there is no food safety problems, not to mention the crazy franchise expansion of other milk tea brands.
The franchise fee for opening a Michelle Ice City is at least 370,000, a little bit is 400,000, and the tea 100 is 362,000.
When the store spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest in a milk tea shop, in the absence of strict supervision of the environment, if you want to return the cost as soon as possible, cut corners, reduce all possible costs, in the drive of human nature is inevitable.
Naisher, the first share of milk tea, had a profit margin of only 0.5% last year.
If the franchise model relaxes the supervision of milk tea shops, then the low and pitiful profit margin is probably the most fundamental reason why milk tea shops have repeatedly violated the ban.
On June 30, Naixue's tea was officially listed in Hong Kong, becoming the "first stock of new-style tea drinking", and in August, Naixue's tea released its interim financial report. According to its prospectus and financial report, we can get a glimpse of the industry's hidden secrets through the development of milk tea leading enterprises.
Nesher's Tea was in a net loss in revenue during the periods of 2018, 2019, 2020 and the first half of 2021, and the adjusted full-year 2020 profit margin began to turn positive, but it was only 0.5%. At present, the profit margin of Naixue's tea has improved in the first half of this year, but the final statistics still need to be determined by the year-end financial report.
Nesher's tea is inferior on the profit side, and it is not blamed on the income side. In fact, Nesher's tea revenue has shown rapid growth year after year.
According to the prospectus, the operating income of Nesher's tea in 2018, 2019 and 2020 was 1.087 billion, 2.502 billion yuan and 3.057 billion yuan respectively, with a year-on-year growth rate of 130.2% and 22.2%, respectively.
Among them, the revenue of fresh tea drinks contributed the highest to Naixue's tea, and has increased year after year, from 72.77% of revenue in 2018 to 75.99% in 2020.
NaiXue's tea profit level is thin, which is fundamentally caused by high operating costs.
The most important costs include raw material costs, staff costs, depreciation costs of fixed assets, and rent and related store operating expenses.
In 2020, the first three costs of Nesher's tea alone reached 2.4 billion yuan, which has cost nearly 80% of the revenue.
In terms of operating data, the number of stores in Naixue's tea as of 2018, 2019, 2020 and the first half of 2021 was 155, 327, 485 and 494 respectively, compared with the rapid expansion of the previous two years, the number of Naixue's tea stores in the first half of this year was almost unchanged.
The slowdown in the growth rate of Nesher's tea stores is visible to the naked eye, which may also be the reality that the entire industry needs to face.
The milk tea industry has lost nine of its ten stores, and its capital layout tends to be a head enterprise
This low profit margin is obviously not the case with Nesher's tea family, if the top two leading enterprises are living with money, it can be seen that the entire industry is estimated to be not much better.
Just look at the closing rate of milk tea shops. As of October 20, Tianyan showed that most of the milk tea companies established within 1 year are still alive, while although there are still nearly 110,000 milk tea companies established 1-5 years ago, more than 70,000 have been revoked and cancelled. Nearly 40% of milk tea businesses can't survive until 5 years.
Not to mention that the milk tea shops that have survived for more than 5 years, the milk tea business enterprises that have been established for 5-10 years, and the number of milk tea shops that have been cancelled has greatly exceeded the existing ones, and there are less than 500 milk tea shops with more than 15 years of seniority in the country.
It can be seen that the milk tea industry ten stores and nine losses, really is not talking about play, if put into a long enough time scale, then 477 milk tea companies stand out from hundreds of thousands of enterprises, the probability is even lower than 1%.
But even so, it still can't stop capital from optimistic about the fresh blood of the ready-made tea industry.
June this year is the peak of the financing period of the capital layout, according to the Mob Research Institute statistics of a total of 7 financing events.
At the same time, Internet giants such as ByteDance, Tencent, and 37 Interactive Entertainment have entered the game, focusing on health, health, national style concepts and rising stars who play lemon tea by hand are more likely to gain capital favor.
In the investment and financing situation, Xicha, Shanghai Auntie, Uncle Qiu Lemon Tea and Michelle Ice City, which have long occupied the market position in the battlefield, are more likely to obtain financing and can also obtain higher financing amounts.
It can be seen that while laying out new players, capital is gradually moving closer to the head enterprises, and the overall pattern of the milk tea industry has been basically stable, entering the era of stock competition.