Coffee with you "may not be with you for much longer."

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"Coffee with you", there is a person who can no longer accompany you.

On July 26th, a sad news came from South Korea when Kang Hun, a representative of South Korea's KH company known as the "king of coffee", committed suicide.

The curtain of Jiang Xun's life slowly falls, and the famous chain brand "Coffee accompany you", which he built at that time, seems to have disappeared from the public opinion field since it fell into the "store closure crisis" in China around 2015.

On July 27, under an office building near the long-distance bus terminal, a "Coffee with you" sign hung in an inconspicuous side. The small storefront is clean, but it obviously has nothing to do with the dreamy Korean style.

Perhaps at noon, there are no other customers in the store except reporters, no business, from the boss to the shop assistant appears to be a little listless, taking care of their own mobile phone. The reporter asked the clerk about the situation of other stores and got a vague answer, "different from our store." The reporter drank this cup of coffee for half an hour, during which time, no customer came to the door.

If you turn the hour hand back to two or three years ago, the situation of "coffee with you" is far from as desolate as it is today.

"Coffee with you" first landed in China in 2012, and the first store opened in Wangjing, Beijing. Around 2013, "Coffee with you" rushed to Jinan on a large scale, and in a very short time, as many as six shops appeared in popular business circles such as Quancheng Road, Honglou and Bayi overpass.

A wave of "Coffee with you" is sweeping the country. The number of "Coffee with you" franchisees is growing exponentially, and "Coffee with you" even shouted with ambition that by 2016, "Coffee with you" will become the first leisure coffee chain in China, operating 3500 stores with a turnover of more than 5 billion.

Unfortunately, the good times are not long, and the "joining tide" has not yet faded. A wave of "closing shops" that has also swept the country has made "coffee accompany you" deeply trapped in the whirlpool of public opinion. A large number of franchisees have closed their doors one after another, and there have been constant waves of unpaid wages and leaving jobs. And Jinan is not immune, in 2015, Jinan 6 "coffee with you" shop fell out of Shimao shop and Huaneng store. Today, through Dianping, word-of-mouth and other websites, you can still find several "coffee to accompany you", but the "trailblazer" at that time, only Honglou Dian and other individual stores in the support.

2015 was a disastrous year for "Coffee with you", but what does it mean when the trader of "Coffee with you" dies?

The situation of "coffee with you" is not alone. ManCoffee, with a similar style, has also fallen into a storm of "shop closure" in Suzhou and other places this year. Zoo coffee in Zhengzhou and Beijing has also been frequently exposed with negative news such as store closures, franchisees running away, and invalidation of stored value cards. The reason is that the power of the "double-edged sword" of the franchise system should not be underestimated. Enterprises in order to open the market in a short period of time, the adoption of franchise system can accelerate the spread of brands, reduce costs and earn more profits. The coffee industry, which can be used as a light catering industry, does not have much choice in product differentiation competition, coupled with the iterative frequency of light catering consumption is too fast, once the brand management can not keep up, but also lack of product innovation and business culture blessing, under the heavy pressure of the capital chain, it is inevitable to fall into a struggle with franchisees, resulting in a lose-lose outcome.

According to the China Food and Beverage report (White Paper 2017), 14807 cafes in China closed in 2016, and 90 percent of them closed in the second half of the year. The foundation of China's coffee market is weak, and the opening speed of individual cafes has exceeded the growth rate of customers.