Today, after the rapid development of coffee with you: pay arrears and close down shop.

Coffee accompany you (Caffebene), born in South Korea in 2008, has become a leading brand in the country's coffee industry. In 2012, coffee accompanied you into China as a joint venture, and experienced more than two years of rapid development, but now it is faced with many problems, such as wage arrears, arrears, shop closure and so on.

█ recovery

"did you get paid today?" on the evening of May 8, at nearly 19:00, someone asked in the post bar of Coffee Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: coffee with you).

Unfortunately, no one followed the post.

This is more like a "window" than the bad news about coffee accompany you that appears frequently in the media these days. Although small, it is enough to reflect part of the current development of coffee with you. Joining the merchants to protect their rights and close the shop is only one of the many problems that coffee accompanies you at present.

Yes, arrears of wages.

"in September last year, there was a problem of arrears of wages, insurance and bonuses for employees with coffee, and the situation became more serious in 2015." On May 6, a former employee who accompanied you told the New Financial Watch reporter.

He said he left coffee with you, one of the very important reasons is that "the salary is wrong every month, should be deducted, should not be deducted, will be deducted, there is no feedback."

As far as he knows, at present, more than 50% of the employees of the coffee training base in Beijing have left their jobs. And the Tianjin office where coffee accompanies you, there is only one employee left at present, although it was only 7 when the staffing was the most.

The same is true of Shandong.

"at present, there are only three employees in Shandong region who can be contacted to accompany you with coffee. Previously, the configuration of coffee with you in this area was 6-8 people." Shandong Liaocheng quasi-join Shangyue Yu said to the new financial observation reporter.

Yue Yu talked with you about his intention to join with Coffee at that time when he began to owe wages. He said he had another business and wanted to worry, so he chose this brand. In addition, cities like Liaocheng are unlikely to welcome coffee brands like Starbucks in a short period of time, and the emerging Korean culture is very popular among post-80s and 90s, so you should be able to make money by investing in coffee company.

According to public information, Coffee Co., Ltd. is the coffee chain with the largest number of franchisees in South Korea. In 2012, a joint venture between China and South Korea established Coffee Management Co., Ltd., and the brand officially landed in China.

To Yue Yu's surprise, after paying the intention payment of 500000 yuan, the coffee accompany your location team for three months and failed to choose a suitable address to open the shop. So he decided to give up the investment.

"come to think of it, at that time, the location team that Coffee accompanied you was very unprofessional because of personnel changes." Yue Yu said.

There are no complaints about coffee accompany you because Yue Yu does not want to join. "the regional manager told me that it will take about a month to withdraw from the offer of gold, need to go through the process, and need the signature of the superior leader."

As a result, after the Spring Festival in 2015, all the regional managers left, and Yue Yu's intention money had not yet been returned.

Coffee accompany your staff to Yue Yu's explanation is that after the change of equity, the company will pay half in April, half in May, and interest in June (resulting from deferred payment).

However, wait until April 26, Yue Yu can not wait for the so-called "half" intention money, but wait for coffee to accompany you "negative news".

Yue Yu was afraid of something wrong with the company, so he went to the Shanghai company that accompanied you with coffee. However, the Shanghai company has been closely "guarded", if it is to ask for money, it will not be able to enter the company at all.

"I joined the company under the pretext of talking about joining. There are only 15 or 16 people in the company who work there, and the top management of the company are not there. I don't know what the people who are left behind are doing. " Yue Yu said.

After returning without success, Yue Yu, who wants to sue coffee to accompany you, starts looking for "companions" in order to have more "strength". As of May 6, he had contacted more than a dozen people across the country who had the same experience. They are from Beijing, Shenzhen, Yinchuan, Jiaxing and Chongqing. Among them, the first person to pay the intention payment was in March 2014.

However, recovery is not limited to employees and prospective franchisees.

"Coffee accompanies you to owe decoration unit construction fee, material supplier fee, furniture fee and so on." The former employee said. The relevant evidence is that the incident of recovery of decoration money by decoration companies has been reported, and complaints from wage-seeking employees are also common in the aforementioned post bar.

█ chaos

The direct consequence of employees leaving and defaulting on all kinds of payments is that there are problems in the supply chain of coffee with you, and the more serious consequence is the rights protection incident of joining Chongqing at the end of April this year.

At one point, the rights protection incident even triggered the argument of "coffee accompany you and compensate you to death." However, in the case of one-sided public opinion, there are also opposing parties.

"most of the troublemakers are bad business, and it just so happens that there are problems with the operation of the company, so they make trouble and want the company to refund the money." Another franchisee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told New Financial Watch.

The franchisee said that if a store is not joined, but is opened by its own location and investment, the store owner will admit it if he loses money. But now, because it is a franchise store, there is a company, so I hope the company can recover its losses.

"and decoration. As far as I know, the decoration company has been making trouble in Beijing every day recently. to be honest, if it were not for this way of cooperation, we would not pay the decoration company money. " The franchisee said.

This is how she described the situation after a month of decoration in her store-the tiles in the kitchen and bathroom of my store have fallen off. Can you imagine the tiles falling one by one in the store? Almost hit the guest on the head. The work of the decoration company is very rough. If this decoration company does the work of home decoration, dare to ask which company is willing to pay them. I think the company should also have its own difficulties.

But no matter what the difficulties of coffee accompany you, after repeatedly defaulting on the fees of the supplier, the franchisee of coffee with you will begin to purchase its own raw materials.

According to the franchisee, large-scale self-procurement began at the end of February and the beginning of March this year.

"as a matter of fact, the company also has goods, but the management of the company is not very good, so franchisees purchase their own goods. They can not only make their own purchases cheaper, but they can also make adjustments according to local tastes. The company is now a bit of a mess. The key is that purchasing is not difficult for me. If the company is slightly lax, I can buy it myself. " She confessed.

She said that she was happy when it seemed very chaotic to the outside world. Because she belongs to the "joint venture" way of joining the business of coffee with you (49% of the shares of the franchisee of the single store and 51% of the shares of the coffee company), she originally made money to give "points" to the company, but now, because of the chaos, "we all collect our own money."

According to the franchisee, there are many similar franchisees, so most of the franchisees who accompany you are still silent.

According to the official website of Coffee, by the end of 2014, there were nearly 600 coffee stores in mainland China (of which direct stores and holding joint venture stores accounted for about 80%). Coffee accompany you the official evaluation of this data is, "the number is second only to Starbucks, the industry leader who has entered China for 20 years, and we have become an industry leader with remarkable achievements in just over two years."

But is there really no problem so soon? The answer is, NO, at least in the eyes of some people.

"the purpose is not pure." This is the evaluation given by the former employees who went through the period when coffee accompanied you in Kyushu in mainland China.

Because to implement some of the company's specific work and even development strategy, his most profound experience of coffee with you is to open a shop! Open a shop! The second is that it is expensive.

The main task of the regional manager of each region is to develop franchisees and open more stores. In 2013, the franchise fee for 100% of franchisees was 350000, but in 2014, it rose to 500000. The decoration of the storefront is carried out uniformly by the company, and the cost that the franchisee needs to bear is 3000 yuan per square meter, but in fact the decoration cost of the same type of decoration company is less than 2000 yuan per square meter. From coffee machines and waffles to cream, coffee beans and syrup, the prices of everything you buy with coffee are higher than the market price, and some of them are even exponentially higher.

He said, for example, that if you open a store of more than 200 square meters, the franchisee needs to invest about 1.8 million yuan, but the franchisee only accounts for 49% of the shares. In fact, 1.8 million is enough to open a cafe of the same level.

"at the annual meeting of coffee with you in 2014, a store with high performance but low profit received official praise. This is enough to show that coffee accompany you do not pay attention to the operation of coffee shops and the income of franchisees, only care about the growth of the number of stores. " The former employee said.

█ unknown

At the end of the story, a paradox suddenly appeared.

With coffee to accompany you to open the shop speed and relatively high fees, why will still be in arrears of staff wages, arrears of suppliers, arrears of decoration team decoration fees, and even quasi-franchisee intention money.

But this has become a reality, and not only in arrears, but also in arrears.

The relevant evidence is that there is an unconfirmed letter from your senior executives to "partner friends" in the coffee bar that came out on March 16. The main content of the letter is that "there is a sum of money in place by April 15. Can pay most of all payables". The letter also mentioned, "I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused by the delay in payment due to tight cash flow."

Judging from the Chongqing store closure incident and Yue Yu's intention of the Jin incident, it is not difficult to judge that the coffee company has not been able to raise funds to meet the urgent needs.

Here comes the problem again. Where's the coffee with your money?

During the interview, many interviewees mentioned, "the capital chain of coffee with you may be broken."

There are two mainstream theories about the reasons for the break of the capital chain. One is that South Korea withdrew its capital because of infighting in the company, which squeezed out South Korean shareholders. The other is, Coffee accompanies you, one of the shares, China Enterprise Asia Pacific Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: China Enterprise Investment) put the money into investment, but the investment failed.

"the company just doesn't have the money anyway." A franchisee concluded.

The industrial and commercial registration information of Coffee with you shows that the company is a limited liability company (Sino-foreign joint venture). The investors are China Enterprise Investment (legal shareholder), Coffee with you Hong Kong Holdings Co., Ltd. (Caffebene Hongkong Holdings Limited) and foreign natural person shareholder Jin Shanqi, with contributions of 25 million, 20 million and 5 million respectively.

On the other hand, Chinese enterprises do have the business of "investment management and investment consulting" in their industrial and commercial registered projects. Regardless of whether the improper investment of Chinese enterprises leads to a shortage of funds, the industrial and commercial registration information that accompanies you with coffee alone shows that there are 15 companies in the investment information column.

What is more interesting is that although the legal person who invests and coffee with you is the same person, Lu Changqing, who does not appear in the investment list and key personnel of the two companies, is the "boss" in the eyes of many franchisees and employees who accompany you. The registered information of Coffee accompany you Hong Kong Holdings Limited shows that the company is a private joint stock limited company and the director is not Lu Changqing.

The reality is that coffee with you is experiencing an unprecedented crisis.

"if coffee accompanies you to cause a 'crisis of confidence' in mainland China and is not handled properly, you may face a wave of shop closures." Zhuang Haifeng, founder of Xingleda Coffee, told New Financial Watch.

In his view, the development of coffee with you in mainland China in recent years is actually not satisfactory, and he has not seriously understood and studied China's coffee consumption market and adopted corresponding development strategies. Also did not fully consider the interests of the franchisee, the franchisee of the system training management training is not in place.

Li Weihua, a franchise expert, told New Financial Watch that coffee should accompany you to review the authorization, investment promotion, construction, logistics, supervision, and even whether there is something wrong with its franchise system. "in particular, the act of supplying goods at a premium to franchisees seriously violates the law of franchising itself, which is suspected of fraud in Europe and the United States."

Almost at the same time, Costa coffee officials put more expectations on the Chinese market, and even expected to "believe that there will be 900 stores in China by 2020."

In comparison, Coffee's previous plan is bolder. According to its website, Coffee will become the first leisure coffee chain in China by 2016, with 3500 stores and turnover exceeding 5 billion.

It is conceivable that the competition in China's coffee market will be more fierce in the next few years, and coffee accompanies you to solve the current predicament first.

On May 8, the good news the franchisee learned was that a company wanted to buy coffee to accompany you. "if someone buys it, it should be a good thing."

She used the term "anxious" to describe the current coffee to accompany you, so much so that the New Financial Watch reporter tried to ask coffee to accompany you to respond to current questions and rumors in a variety of ways, and even sent the interview questions to the investment of Chinese enterprises and the legal person who accompanied you with coffee, but to no avail.

Source: new Financial Watch