Many "Coffee with you" stores in Guangzhou are closed.

Li Bingru, a reporter from the □ Information Times

"Coffee accompany you (caffebene)", which once entered the mainland market under the name of "South Korea's largest coffee chain", is no longer good. A reporter from the Information Times visited the market and found that many stores in Guangzhou had been closed, and some former employees revealed that "coffee accompany you" had owed employees' wages, and even revealed that South Korea was suspected to have withdrawn from the Chinese market. The reporter dialed coffee to accompany you with the contact information of the Chinese official website, but the other side refused to respond.

Many stores have been closed.

In March 2012, "Coffee with you" officially entered mainland China. In June 2013, the first "Coffee with you" shop in Guangzhou entered the famous "Korean Street" Vision Road in Guangzhou to "test the waters" Guangzhou market. New Year's Day opened its second branch in Zhengjia Plaza in Guangzhou in 2014. Subsequently, the construction of the sixth Road, Lefeng Square, Changdi Road and other three branches have opened, in February of the same year. The official Weibo once again announced the opening of the China Plaza store, Kaisa store and Huiwin Plaza store, which came to an abrupt end after the store opened in April 2014.

According to the official website of "Coffee with you", there were 18 branches in Guangzhou before, and the reporter called the phone numbers of each branch one by one during business hours on the official website, and there were seven branches whose phones were out of service, empty number or non-existent number.

Then the reporter visited and found that almost all of the above seven stores were closed. For example, there is no trace of the coffee branch on Jianliu Road, which is located in more coffee shops, while the shop on Xihu Road, which is also in a state of downtime, has its door locked by two U-shaped locks, and four "Wangdian rent" notices have been posted on the door. According to the clerk of the shoe store next door, the store was closed at the beginning of this year. The coffee shops in the Universal Plaza and Binjiang East Road in Haizhu District have also closed their doors.

The business of Zhengjia Plaza and Lefeng Plaza, which are normally open, is booming, except for the regular customers of "coffee with you", because it is raining that day, and there are many new customers who take shelter and rest in the store.

The low profitability of a single store is a hard wound.

"I owed three months' wages around August and October last year, and then I paid a month's wages, and I owed more money and money to the franchisee," a former employee of "Coffee with you", who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Information Times. He also believes that "Coffee accompany you" has chaotic management, high costs and jumbled personnel within mainland Chinese companies, with more than 1000 employees in one region alone, and the cost of a business trip to Shanghai has exceeded 100000 yuan.

However, some people in the industry (Li Junhan, founder of dandelion Coffee and one of the founders of app Gurgle Technology) believe that the more serious problem is that the profitability of the single store of "coffee accompany you" has not kept up with the pace of expansion. In his view, whether it is the entrusted joint venture model that can provide a lot of funding sources, or at least more than half of the stores can make money. To subsidize the other half's long-term development, but in fact, most of the stores that accompany you are losing money.

It is reported that at present, the chain stores that accompany you are divided into four modes: wholly-owned joining, entrusted joint venture joining, financial innovation joining and coffee bar entrusted leasing joining, and the entrusted joint venture stores account for the majority. According to the information on your official website, under the entrusted joint venture, the coffee company accounts for 51% of your shares and 49% of the franchisee's shares. Coffee company you have absolute control over the store and absolute say in management.

The official Wechat account has stopped updating.

Some citizens, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Information Times that they had planned to join Coffee to accompany you to open a store in Guangzhou, but later found that the franchise fee was too high and finally stopped.

"No one of my former colleagues will stay in the 'coffee with you' anymore," the former employee told reporters. Outside South China, news of the withdrawal of South Korean capital has also been reported in Chongqing, Guiyang and other places.

Over the past few days, the reporter has dialed coffee many times to accompany you to join the hotline in South China, but the phone has always been unanswered.

According to the above-mentioned claims of former employees and the analysis of people in the industry, the Information Times reporter has not received a reply from "coffee with you" as of press time. The reporter called "Coffee accompany you" the Chinese official website customer service hotline has been unanswered, and then the reporter dialed coffee to accompany you on the Chinese official website Coffee smile Service Hotline. One is empty. The other fixed phone number in Beijing is connected by a male staff member. The other party said he was in charge of attracting investment and was not clear about other situations. He refused to respond to the questions asked by the reporter.

The reporter logged in the coffee to accompany you to the official Weibo to see that the latest entry was updated on March 6 this year. In addition, the official Wechat account of Coffee in South China and Northwest China has also stopped updating since March 8.

Observe

Standards vary from store to store

Standardization process is considered to be one of the process management standards of chain stores, but Guangzhou's "coffee accompany you", in addition to a unified store image, other details are difficult to achieve unity. For example, on Mother's Day, the shop in Huilong Square in Panyu has the activity of "bring my mother over for consumption and the second drink is half price", while the Kimberly-Bailey store on civilized Road says there is no discount because it is the weekend. In addition, in the "Coffee with you" stores in Guangzhou, many things on the table are often not cleaned in time. "it is clearly written on the group purchase that you can order pizza, but the waiter will tell me no and ask me to eat bread instead. I think it is because they are unwilling to make it or they are understaffed." A customer of Dianping made such a comment.