This is an English adaptation of a FoodBud historical article originally published on December 16, 2021.
On December 15, 2021, an internal employee dispute at Chayan Yuese, the Changsha-based tea chain also known as Modern China Tea Shop or Sexy Tea, began spreading from company group chats to Xiaohongshu and then Weibo. What started as complaints about pay quickly turned into a broader public discussion about employee pressure, customer-facing language, and the operating strain facing the brand.
The dispute appears to have developed in several stages:
The article argues that the incident exposed two operating issues: pandemic-driven losses and the management complexity of directly operated tea stores.
Chayan Yuese reportedly lost RMB20 million in one month during the pandemic period. According to Jihai data cited in the article, the brand had 523 operating stores and 39 monitored closures at the time.
In November 2021, Chayan Yuese had already addressed “concentrated temporary closures” on its official Weibo account. The company said that this was its third round of concentrated temporary closures that year. It said stores would reopen gradually after the outbreak eased and traffic recovered, and that although the business was “certainly not living that well,” the team’s mindset remained positive after repeated pandemic adjustments.
The article frames Chayan Yuese’s problem as part of a wider shock to offline chains in Changsha. Business was strong during the May Day holiday, but outbreaks hit during the summer, before the National Day Golden Week, and again toward year-end.
Because high-speed rail passenger data was not available, the article used airport traffic as a proxy. Based on Flight Manager DSAT data, inbound passenger flow at Changsha Huanghua Airport exceeded 1 million in each month from April to July 2021. In August, after an outbreak, inbound traffic fell to about 300,000. It recovered to 830,000 in September, fell again in October, and returned to the 300,000-plus range in November.
The article argues that 2021 was harder for many offline chains than 2020. In 2020, the outbreak period was more concentrated and consumption rebounded after control measures. In 2021, outbreaks were intermittent, persistent, and often coincided with key holiday periods.
For Chayan Yuese, the concentration of stores in Changsha created systemic exposure when local traffic fell. The article says the brand’s push into Wuhan reflected stronger store performance there.
Other chains were also under pressure. Nayuki had previously announced that repeated outbreaks in multiple regions had affected some third-quarter stores, and that its 2021 full-year revenue growth versus 2020 would be lower than expected. Haidilao had also announced plans to close 300 stores.
The article’s second point is operational: new-style tea chains require more labor-intensive store execution than coffee chains.
Employee complaints mentioned tasks such as brewing tea on site and shouting service slogans. The article argues that milk-tea store management is more difficult than coffee-store management, which is one reason Starbucks and Luckin have struggled to execute tea-style products smoothly.
Starbucks can hardly ask store partners to peel grapes by hand, but tea shops often operate this way. The article also links Starbucks’ then-recent food-safety issues to tea-style products such as matcha liquid and peach pulp used in Frappuccino-like items. Compared with tea ingredients that may have shelf lives of only one to two days, coffee beans have longer optimal-use periods and are less likely to create similar expiration issues.
Leading new-style tea brands such as Heytea and Nayuki rely heavily on fresh fruit, which demands tighter control of ingredient freshness. Nayuki had recently invested RMB38.64 million for a stake in Tianye Co., which plays a fruit-processing role in the supply chain: cleaning fruit, supplying some fruit after washing, and peeling, cutting, freezing, or refrigerating items such as strawberries and mangoes before delivery to Nayuki’s logistics centers.
The article also notes employee complaints about on-site tea brewing. Some Chayan Yuese products reportedly required tea to be brewed in-store before serving, increasing customer wait times.
Nayuki was cited as an example of a brand using digital training through Teacore to optimize SOPs. In the previous manual process, tea brewing required precise control of water volume, temperature, added ice, and final tea temperature range; if the range was missed, the tea was discarded. With self-service tea-making equipment, staff could load ingredients and let the machine handle the process, reducing labor, lowering waste, and improving the customer experience.
The article argues that Chayan Yuese needed to learn from such digital and process-efficiency improvements. It also criticizes the brand’s use of standardized A4-script service slogans, saying that a former ability to chat naturally with customers had become overly scripted.
The final point is managerial: the dispute began with pay, but reflected broader pressure in the company’s development. The article says emotional responses from founders do not help frontline communication. Its suggested focus was to open more stores against the cycle, improve process efficiency, and train the team.
Note: investment amounts, store counts, closure plans, and forward-looking revenue comments are historical figures from the December 16, 2021 source article.