Dilute the "Chinese flavor"! The all-English menu of Xi tea provokes overseas guests!

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Recently, a post about the menu of tea stores in Southampton, UK has caused a heated discussion on social platforms.

According to the poster, when he was buying drinks at a tea shop in Southampton, England, he noticed a change in the menu placed in the ordering area. All the Chinese product names on the screen had disappeared, leaving only one English word. For this kind of all-English menu, the customer said bluntly that he was at a loss when he saw it, saying frankly that although he knew English, it was impossible to report the good news of tea and English dishes as directly as the Chinese name.

The poster also said that the store's Chinese staff did not adapt to the brand-new English menu and made a mistake in ordering the drinks they wanted, so that customers'"sense of experience" became very poor. In the view of the parties, "there will be French and English in the UK and Spanish and English in the UK", so the Chinese milk tea shop should also provide a bilingual menu in both Chinese and English according to its environment to facilitate the ordering needs of local customers.

After the post was released, the Southampton store of Xi Tea contacted customers to apologize and explained that the new menu in the store had been replaced at the request of the headquarters, and they could not return to the previous bilingual menu. Interestingly, in addition to the Southampton store in the UK, fans said one after another in the comment area that the Oxford Street store in London, the Labs store in New York in the United States, and a store in Sydney, Australia, had been changed to an all-English menu.

(the picture shows the menu of Happy Tea Labs in New York)

In addition, some netizens pointed out that after the updated version of the official App of Xi Cha, the original function of independently selecting the system language and following the mobile phone to set the independent choice language was cancelled, and the system language of the program was changed to follow the user location display. In other words, Japanese will be displayed on the screen when overseas customers use the App in Japan, but it will be automatically switched to English in the United States and back to Chinese only if it is located in China.

After the official changes in the menu and App were discovered by overseas consumers, there was a great deal of discussion among onlookers. Some people believe that these changes to like tea are to cater to the spending habits of local users, so that local customers can understand the brand characteristics more quickly through the all-British menu.

But this view is difficult to convince other users. Many people say bluntly that most of the customers who go to Xicha overseas stores to buy drinks are Chinese who study, work, and live there, so the Chinese-English bilingual menu is suitable for consumers in overseas stores. "I have been in the UK for half my life. I still want to read Chinese when I eat my own Chinese food!" .

Netizens who have lived overseas for a long time also said that Chinese milk tea shops in different countries mostly use Chinese-English bilingual menus, and some areas also add French, Italian, German and other instructions on the menu. it is convenient for local customers in different languages to place orders.

However, Xi Cha deletes the name of the Chinese product from the menu, which affects the ordering experience of overseas Chinese. Moreover, as some netizens said, this kind of behavior seems to erase the Chinese symbol of the brand. A netizen commented sharply that "this change is not to cater to localization, but to 'cut seats' with my Chinese identity, which is difficult to accept."

In the view of most people, when domestic chain brands are stationed in overseas markets, they need to adjust measures to local conditions and use the local common language in menus, App, etc., but they should also retain Chinese menus. Many netizens pointed out that if Xi Cha does not use Chinese signboards and product names overseas, it will not only dilute its "middle taste", but also make local consumers misunderstand it and mistake it for a chain brand of other Asian countries.

As the popularity of posts increased, the official customer service of Xi Cha appeared in the comment area, but did not respond to the use of all-English menus in overseas stores. Some netizens responded with indignation, saying bluntly that if the authorities did not give a reasonable explanation for the change and replace it with the original Chinese-English bilingual menu, they might boycott and stop buying the brand's products.

Picture from: network screenshot

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