Image source: Overlord Chahime
Blue Whale News, July 16 (Reporter Sun Yu) On July 15, Bawang Chaji appeared on the hot search twice. One is that Overlord Chaji was revealed to be poaching a large number of people in the industry; The other is that the woman said that she was publicized after resigning from Overlord Chaji. Overlord Chaji also responded to both of these things.
In detail, the first thing, according to 36 Krypton, Overlord Chaji has recently recruited a large number of people in the industry, from headquarters to branches, with Starbucks and Tims being the majority. In terms of brand marketing, it poached people from companies such as Xiaohongshu and Huawei. Among them, the news that attracted the most attention was that "Starbucks Vice President Li Tao has left his post and joined Bawang Chaji in the first half of this year", and then, Bawang Chaji responded: "There is no such thing".
The second thing is that a woman recently posted on social platforms that after she resigned from Bawang Chaji, she was posted by the store with her ID number for publicity, and she also said that she was suppressed by the store manager when she went to work. In addition, the announcement mentioned that the employee was dismissed and blackened, and he was not allowed to engage in any related work of Bawang Chaji for three years. On the evening of July 15, Bawang Chaji apologized for "being posted public after the former employee left the company", saying that the company had asked the store to immediately "revoke the publicity", contact the partner to apologize, and suspend the person in charge of the store involved and the person in charge of regional management.
From a legal point of view, Wei Yiwei of Beijing DHH (Shanghai) Law Firm told Blue Whale News: "The disclosure of the personal information of departing employees is suspected of violating their privacy, and the original employer should not disclose it at will, let alone protect goodwill in this way." Workers have the right to freely choose their employment, and their right to choose their own employment should not be deprived in a discriminatory manner. ”
Behind the high salary poaching and the inability to fully protect the rights and interests of front-line employees is the rapid expansion of Bawang Chaji in the past two years. According to the data of Narrow Door Dining Eye, as of July 9, the number of new stores of Bawang Chaji in 2024 will be 1,521, which exceeds the total number of new stores opened by Bawang Chaji in the three years from 2020 to 2022, and also reached more than 60% of the number of new stores opened in the whole of last year.
The long queue to buy tea is hard to come by
In 2017, Bawang Tea opened its first store in Yunnan, relying on the positioning of "raw leaves + fresh milk" and the success of the large single product of "Boya Juexian", forming differentiated competition with tea companies based on fruit tea such as Hey Tea and Nai Xue's tea, and standing out in the fiercely competitive new tea beverage track.
In the past two years, Bawang Chaji has entered the fast lane of expansion. According to the data of Narrow Door Restaurant, as of now, Bawang Chaji has a total of 4,714 stores, of which more than seventy percent of the stores have been newly opened in the past two years, and the number of stores opened from 2020 to June 2024 is 122, 215, 617, 2317, and 1521 respectively.
Data source: Narrow Door Dining Eye
Compared with its peers, Bawang Chaji will expand faster in 2024. According to the data, in the first half of 2024, there will be 1,521 new stores of Bawang Chaji, 1,030 new stores of Chabaidao, 525 new stores of Gu Ming, and 1,178 new stores of Shanghai Auntie.
With the expansion of the number of Bawang Tea Ji stores, it is becoming more and more rare for consumers to queue up to buy milk tea. At 15:50 this afternoon, Blue Whale News located Shanghai on the Bawang Chaji order applet for search, some stores showed more than 10 cups made in front, and some stores displayed "Order now, make immediately", and occasionally some stores displayed about 50 cups in front. According to the official announcement of Bawang Chaji, the production time of a cup of Boya Jue is 10 seconds, the average time of all tea drinks is 20 seconds, and the waiting time of consumers is about 15 minutes based on 50 cups.
Blue Whale News learned from consumers of Bawang Chaji (Shanghai Wujiang Road store), "When ordering at the beginning of this year, I often encounter the situation that there are more than 100 cups being made in front of me, and sometimes I need to wait for half an hour to get it, which is rare recently." According to media reports, when Bawang Chaji opened its first store in Chengdu in 2021, the queue stretched for hundreds of meters and lasted for three months.
It is worth mentioning that the payback cycle of Bawang Chaji's franchised stores is also getting longer. Blue Whale News previously learned from industry insiders that the franchisees of Bawang Chaji will return to their original costs very quickly, and they can return their costs in 6 months. However, according to the latest situation, the cycle of overlord tea Ji to return to the original is getting longer. Judging from the official franchise policy, the franchise fee is 19,800, the comprehensive service fee is 50,000, the deposit is 20,000, the brand usage fee is 15,000, the first batch of materials is 100,000, and the decoration is more than 150,000...... Taking 60 square meters as an example, excluding rent, deposit, and labor costs, it probably requires an investment of more than 600,000 yuan.
Tea analysts have calculated that the landing cost of a Bawang tea store is about 1 million, and the average daily net profit of a store is about 2,000 yuan based on a gross profit margin of 60%, and the payback cycle is 16 months, which is higher than the previous 6-month payback cycle.
Poach people with high salaries and increase the size to go to sea
Back to this hot search incident, Overlord Chaji is poaching people with high salaries, and on the other hand, there are deficiencies in the protection of the rights and interests of grassroots employees. Blue Whale News saw on Boss Zhipin that there is a big difference between the salaries of store employees and headquarters employees. Among them, the tea drinker working in Shanghai has a monthly salary of 6,000 yuan, 8 hours of double rest to provide accommodation and social security, and the age limit is 18-30 years old. Among them, the monthly salary of tea students is 5,000-5,500 yuan, plus a cup commission. In contrast, Bawang Chaji's senior product operations, commodity planning, C-end product managers and other positions are all with a monthly salary of more than 20,000 yuan.
It is worth mentioning that the opening of the first store of Bawang Chaji in Hong Kong was exposed on social platforms, and from the perspective of recruitment salary, the salary of store clerks during the training period was 14,500 Hong Kong dollars (equivalent to about 13,500 yuan), and the salary of the milk tea store manager was 18,000-25,000 yuan (equivalent to about 16,700-23,200 yuan).
Recently, the news that "Bawang Chaji has a headquarters in Shanghai" has also been widely circulated in the industry, and Bawang Chaji has settled in Shanghai Hongqiao United Building, and the entire building has been rented and named. Today, Bawang Chaji implements a "dual headquarters" strategy – Chengdu is the operational headquarters and Shanghai is the global headquarters. Industry insiders believe that this move is a manifestation of Bawang Chaji's pursuit of overseas development.
In May this year, Zhang Junjie, the founder of Bawang Chaji, disclosed that in 2023, the GMV (total merchandise sales) of Bawang Chaji will reach 10.8 billion yuan, and in terms of single stores, the average monthly sales of a single store in 2023 will be 24,000 cups, with the highest peak selling of 8,687 cups a day, and the single product "Boya Juexian" will sell about 230 million cups in 2023, and in the first quarter of 2024, the GMV of Bawang Chaji will reach 5.8 billion yuan. In addition, Zhang Junjie said that Bawang Chaji's goal in 2024 is to "surpass Starbucks China in China's sales".
From the perspective of financing, Tianyancha shows that Bawang Chaji has completed two rounds of financing with a total amount of more than 300 million yuan from 2020 to 2021, with investors from Fosun Group, XVC, Cong Biqiushi, etc. In 2023, Bawang Chaji will receive investment from the United States hedge fund Coatue, and the company's valuation will reach 3 billion yuan.
It is reported that Bawang Chaji is expected to go public in the United States this year, and is expected to raise up to 300 million US dollars, or about 2.34 billion Hong Kong dollars, and Citibank and Morgan Stanley will be responsible for the listing.
It should be pointed out that catering is a people's business, and consumer satisfaction comes not only from food, but also from the relaxed atmosphere and pleasant experience during the dining process. No matter how rapid the expansion of Bawang Tea Ji is, the most important thing for consumers is whether the cup of tea in their hands is delicious and whether the experience when buying milk tea in the store is comfortable.