Author | Cao Yang Feng Xiaoting
Editor | Rao Feixia
"I don't know, it doesn't matter. Everything is normal here. "
Although the event of "0 sucrose and 0 sugar" caused an uproar among consumers, it was found in the on-site visit of Burning Finance that the production base of Yuan Qi Forest in Chuzhou, Anhui Province was not in danger.
"I heard that they are still expanding their production bases and recruiting many people." Chuzhou locals have a good impression of Yuan Qi Forest Factory. "They are treated better than the locals."
However, in Chuzhou, the beverage of "Yuan Qi Forest" is unknown. In the hotel where Rancai stayed, Yuan Qi Forest products were not found in the exhibition hall of the hotel, and more were conventional drinks such as Master Kong and Coca-Cola. On the shelves of local supermarkets, the information of Chuzhou factory only appeared on a "milk tea" drink produced by Yuan Qilin. Moreover, the prices of local supermarkets are similar to those of cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou.
The local residents don't know much about Yuan Qi forest. Most elderly citizens say that they have never heard of this brand. Only when they mention the information of the local factory in Yuan Qi Forest will they respond, "Oh, you say this, this is just a Beijing brand, and it is only a factory in Chuzhou." They don't drink this locally produced "Internet celebrity drink" very much. "It's a bit expensive. I heard it's still sugar-free. There is no special taste, and we don't like it very much. "
Drinks that are not popular in the place of origin are highly sought after among young people.
According to the Beijing News Shell Finance, during June 19, Yuan Qi Forest sold 2.26 million bottles of drinks in Tmall, winning the first place in the sales volume and sales volume of water drinks in Tmall. The total sales of the whole network reached 3.23 million bottles, and the total sales exceeded150,000 yuan. By May 2020, the monthly sales of forests in Yuan Qi will reach 260 million yuan, exceeding 20 18 of the whole year. In the first five months of 2020, * * * sold 65.438+0.9 billion bottles, with a total sales of 660 million yuan. In 2020, the sales of Yuan Qi forest will reach nearly 3 billion yuan.
"0 sucrose, 0 sugar" is the selling point of Yuan Qi forest. Since its birth, Yuan Qi Forest, under the banner of "0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories", has quickly become an online celebrity brand in the domestic beverage industry. It has gained a large number of young consumers and won the favor of capital.
According to the professional edition of Tianyancha, since its establishment, Yuan Qisenlin has maintained the rhythm of financing once a year. On March 30th, 20021,Yuan Qisenlin completed a new round of strategic financing, which was led by new shareholders Huaping Investment, L catterton and old shareholder China of Sequoia Capital. Although the transaction amount was not disclosed, the valuation of Yuan Qi Woods has reached $6 billion after the completion of this round of financing.
According to 36Kr's previous report, after the strategic financing was completed on March 1 2020, the valuation of Yuan Qi Forest was US$ 2 billion. In other words, in less than a year, the valuation of Yuan Qi Forest has soared by about three times.
But now, Yuan Qi Woods hit himself in the face.
On April 10, Yuan Qi Forest official Weibo released a Weibo called "belated upgrade", redefining "0 sucrose, 0 sugar" to consumers. It said that in the product labeling and promotion of milk tea products, the difference between "0 sugar" and "0 sucrose" was not explained, which was easy to cause misunderstanding. The packaging of most milk teas produced from February 4th and all milk teas produced from March18th was changed from "0 sucrose and low fat" to "low sugar and low fat". All raw materials of Yuan Qi forest milk tea produced from March 20th no longer contain crystalline fructose.
Born in a vibrant forest, Weibo immediately caused an uproar on social media. "Even if you cheat me, you still cheat me to gain weight." "Isn't this cheating consumers?" "Yuan Qi Woods gets rich by bluffing" ... On all platforms, accusations against Yuan Qi Woods are endless. As of the press release of Combustion Finance, the reading volume of Weibo's topic # Yuan Qi Forest apologizes for promoting 0 sucrose # has reached 260 million, and the discussion volume is 1.8 million.
Explanations of consumers and insiders on Yuan Qi Forest not selling accounts. KellyWeaver, a user in Zhihu and a master of epidemiology at the University of Munich, said that from the existing research evidence, replacing sucrose with fructose is not only a business integrity issue, but also a practice that will cause additional health risks to consumers.
On April 12, Xinhuanet commented that Yuan Qi Forest's "Reminding Apology" and red envelopes could not calm consumers' anger: "Is an apology useful? My fat meat does not accept an apology! " Moreover, as Yuan Qi Forest wrote at the beginning of the announcement, "a belated upgrade", officials are still playing word games and apologizing verbally, but in fact, the core still defines the incident as "product upgrade" rather than "marketing accident".
Tang Meng, a lawyer from Shanghai Everbright Law Firm, told Burning Finance that it has been admitted that the information of ingredients is inconsistent, which may indeed make some consumers mistakenly think that there is no sugar. According to Article 28 of the Advertising Law, if the composition information of a commodity is inconsistent with the actual situation and has a substantial impact on the purchase behavior, it can be considered as a false advertisement.
According to Article 55 of the Advertising Law, those who illegally publish false advertisements shall be ordered by the market supervision and management department to stop publishing advertisements, and the advertisers shall be ordered to eliminate the influence within the corresponding scope, and a fine of more than three times and less than five times the advertising expenses shall be imposed. If the advertising expenses cannot be calculated or obviously low, the maximum fine may be one million yuan.
It's not just a vibrant forest. In recent years, under the propaganda and cognition of "high sugar accelerates aging and obesity", contemporary young people have a strong sense of Buddhism, and "0 sugar", "0 calories" and "0 fat" have gradually become the pursuit of many young people. As a result, a series of new sugar substitute or even zero sugar products came into being, and well-known brands such as Nongfu Spring, Coca Cola and Master Kong all had corresponding products.
Sugar substitutes are artificial sweeteners. According to the report of 30,000 Capital, artificial sweeteners refer to chemicals with sweet taste, which have been artificially modified or synthesized. They are very sweet and contain no calories. Most artificial sweeteners are hardly transformed by human body and have no nutritional value.
But this does not mean that some so-called "sugar-free" drinks on the market are really "sugar-free", and consumers need to be more careful when purchasing.
After the "painted skin" is peeled off, whether the image of Yuan Qi Forest in consumers' minds can be the same as before depends on whether Yuan Qi Forest can win back the trust that consumers once had in it. Obviously, this is very difficult.
Despite great criticism from the outside world, the origin of dynamic forest is still "full of vitality".
On the afternoon of April 13, Ran Caijing came to Chuzhou, Anhui Province, the first self-built production base established by Yuan Qisenlin, and several large trucks were parked outside the north gate of the factory. The truck is in an orderly state. After the front vehicle enters the factory, the rear vehicle will drive to the factory gate for the factory staff to disinfect the vehicle. After the front car is loaded and driven out, the rear car enters the factory again, and so on.
"I don't know, the cars coming and going these two days (the maximum allowable traction mass of 40000kg container cars) have not decreased. Almost as usual, 40-50 times a day. " In the afternoon, there were several truck drivers waiting to load the goods outside the north gate. When Burning Finance asked them if they knew the recent statement issued by Yuan Qi Woods and the hot discussion in the society, they all said they knew nothing about it.
When Rancai further asked where the goods were generally shipped, a driver replied, "Chuzhou is a relatively large production area, and the goods are all from all over the country." According to the observation of combustion finance, the license plates of several trucks parked at the gate are mostly 10,000 m, which means that the vehicles are mostly from Nanjing and Chuzhou.
"Everything is normal here." An employee of Yuan Qi Forest Factory also said he didn't know. The employee told Ran Caijing that from his observation, the production of the factory has not been affected in recent days.
"There will be no impact, we are still expanding production." The above-mentioned employees told Combustion Finance that only the first phase of the project has been put into production, and the second phase of the project, which started construction last year, is coming to an end, and the completion and production is just around the corner.
In fact, Yuan Qi Forest is also recruiting people in Chuzhou. In the small program of Chuzhou Talent Network, Yuan Qi Forest Company released 15 post, and another human resources company released two posts related to Yuan Qisenlin. In Yuan Qisenlin's related 17 post, the recruitment number of beverage technicians and packaging operators is as high as 30, and the monthly salary of packaging operators is in the range of 4000-7000 yuan, while the monthly salary of beverage technicians is in the range of 6000-7000 yuan.
Wang Li intends to come to Yuan Qi Forest Company for an interview. He told RangFinance that the wages and benefits provided by Yuan Qi Forest are good locally. "The salary of local workers in Chuzhou is around 4,000 yuan, but Yuan Qi Forest not only buys five insurances and one gold for employees, but also includes food and shelter. The salary is several hundred thousand yuan more than other factories."
Wang Li told Burning Finance that he only knew that Yuan Qi Forest was an online celebrity brand, but he had never bought products from Yuan Qi Forest. "Four or five yuan a bottle of drinks is a bit expensive, and I also said that sugar-free and sugar-free drinks will not taste good, so I have never bought them." Combustion Finance understands that many local people hold similar views, and the staff of several supermarkets all say that the products of Yuan Qi Forest are rarely sold locally.
Wang Li said that although he has never tasted Yuan Qisenlin's products himself, from his past experience, he thinks it is still a very good company. "The development of beverage and food companies mainly depends on production capacity. Simply put, the more cars come to the factory for delivery every day, the better the company is. I used to work in Yinlu, and the trucks delivered by Yinlu in one day were not as much as those delivered by Yuan Qi Forest Factory for half a day. "
In addition to the second phase project of Chuzhou factory, Yuan Qi Forest invested in production bases in Tianjin and Zhaoqing, Guangdong last year. Yuan Qi Forest has invested heavily in factories in East China, North China and South China, and even plans to build factories in Wuhan, Chengdu and other cities in the next step. The motive is obvious. One is to expand production capacity and innovation, and the other is to promote market radiation in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta and reduce transportation costs.
After all, before the Chuzhou production base was completed and put into production in July 2020, Yuan Qilin's products were all produced by OEM. While recruiting in Chuzhou, Yuan Qi Forest did not forget to post the post of "in-factory beverage production" on the direct employment of BOSS, which was mainly responsible for the production management of the foundry.
Rancai visited supermarkets in Beijing, Guangzhou, Chuzhou and other places. There are six kinds of Yuan Qilin products displayed on the shelves, among which soaking in water, burning tea and milk tea are the most common, and the other three products are full marks, bodybuilding light tea and abnormity, which are not conventional products.
When looking further at the information on the bottle of Yuan Qisenlin's products, Combustion Finance found that most of the products were commissioned by Yuan Qisenlin, and there were several commissioned companies. Among them, Jianlibao, Huiyuan, Tongshi (unified OEM), Toyo Beverage and other companies all OEM Yuan Qilin's products. Interestingly, the series of milk tea with problems in Yuan Qi forest this time are all produced in the world except in Chuzhou factory, and at the same time, the world is also the trustee of unified Assam milk tea.
In sharp contrast to the "everything is normal" production base, it is angry consumers.
"Important misleading, people with high blood sugar are seriously affected." "My family has diabetes and can't drink sugar. Seeing that they say there is no sugar, they often buy it. Isn't this harmful? " "I still drink with peace of mind every day, which is so expensive to sell." "There is nothing to believe in a product that has been copied from its name." ..... Under the topic of Weibo, criticism of the vibrant forest can be seen everywhere.
But Yuan Qi forest obviously didn't take it seriously. In April 10 Weibo, they gave a seemingly perfect solution. "Users who have bought milk tea in the official store of Yuan Qi Forest E-commerce can contact the customer service of the store to receive 20 yuan cash red packets."
This solution was pointed out by consumers as "insincere". "It is a false propaganda, saying that consumers should be compensated, and consumers have to rush to find you. Taobao customer service couldn't stand it many times and forcibly closed the conversation ... "Many consumers have encountered the above experience. "My customer service has not read the white strawberry for six and a half hours. I have searched for it several times, but no one has replied at all." "The customer service didn't reply after reading it, so what's the point of sending me a text message?"
Netizen Xiao Jian told Burning Finance that she went to Tmall flagship store to communicate with customer service after receiving the message of "late red envelope" from Yuan Qi Forest flagship store on the morning of April1/kloc-0, but after sending messages to customer service many times, she didn't get a positive reply from customer service. Xiao Jian has now found the red envelope registration link of the registration information. As of press time, the amount has not yet arrived.
Although the Yuan Qi Forest official said, "There are too many users of milk tea, now all accounts in the store are warned of risks because of too many red envelopes. Please be patient. " However, the word game triggered by Yuan Qi Forest's milk tea product "0 sucrose, low fat" does not seem to have subsided.
Since the establishment of 20 16, Yuan Qisenlin has taken the concept of "sugar-free, low calorie" as its target group. Under the strong marketing offensive, Yuan Qi Forest has made great strides in the beverage market.
Yuan Qi Forest can be called a "big deal" in marketing. According to the product survey report of Growthbox, in 2020, Yuan Qi Forest spent 600 million yuan on online and offline marketing, and the advertising was mainly concentrated on variety shows and TV dramas.
According to incomplete statistics of burning finance, Yuan Qi Forest has sponsored many kinds of arts such as Our Band, Sports Teenager, A String of Life, Life is Boiling, etc. In 2020, Yuan Qi Forest won the sponsorship right of the Spring Festival Gala with 654.38+0.5 billion yuan.
Besides variety shows, Yuan Qi Forest will be in 2020. Yuqi Zhang, who brought her own traffic, was invited to be the brand ambassador by the popularity of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves". According to the official information of the forest, stars such as, Ebo,,, and Sun are also drinking forest products.
This series of operations has deepened the impression of Yuan Qi Forest in the hearts of the public, especially young people, and also made Yuan Qi Forest favored by capital.
According to the information of Tianyancha, one year after its establishment, Yuan Qi Forest completed the Angel Round financing in July 2065438+July 2065438+February 2009, and the investor was Challenger Capital. Since then, Yuan Qi Woods has basically maintained a good performance of one round of financing every year.
In 20 19, Yuan Qi forest completed the second round of strategic financing and1500 million RMB in March and June respectively.
However, with the rapid development of dynamic forest, in fact, long before the announcement of Weibo, there were endless doubts about its "sugar-free" milk tea.
KellyWeaver, a user from Zhihu and a master of epidemiology at the University of Munich, clearly classified Yuan Qi forest milk tea as a high-sugar/high-calorie group in the article "Comments on the Nutritional Value of Common Low-sugar and Sugar-free Drinks in Supermarket".
KellyWeaver said that sucrose added to ordinary drinks and fructose added to Yuan Qi forest milk tea are actually refined sugars. Therefore, in terms of nutrition, adding sucrose to ordinary drinks is "adding sugar", and adding fructose to Yuan Qi forest milk tea is also "adding sugar". More notably, fructose is more unhealthy than sucrose.
According to its calculation, the energy of a 480ml bottle of coffee-flavored milk tea is as high as180 * 480/100/4.184 = 206kcal, which is equivalent to that of a woman with mild physical activity 18-49 years old.
In addition, KellyWeaver said that the low fructose GI involved in the promotion of Yuan Qi Forest Milk Tea was purely a word game. "GI is the glycemic index. If you ingest fructose and then measure glucose, you will find nothing?"
Except that the ingredients of its milk tea products are questioned, Yuan Qi Forest adopts Japanese style from trademark to packaging, but the actual origin, factory and sales market are all in China, and the "pseudo-Japanese style" storm has never stopped.
However, at that time, Yuan Qisenlin was probably busy building a factory and had no time to pay attention to word games and the "pseudo-Japanese" storm.
With the help of the concepts of "sugar-free" and "getting rich", what kind of gold mines are excavated in the dynamic forest?
According to IDF data, in 20 19, the number of diabetic patients (aged 20-79) in the world has reached 463 million, and it is estimated that by 2045, 700 million people in the world will suffer from diabetes. IDF predicts that by 2045, the number of diabetic patients in China, India and the United States will reach 6.5438+47 million, 6.5438+34 million and 36 million respectively.
With the upgrading of consumption and the development of people's health awareness, more and more people begin to pay attention to the harm of excessive intake of sugar to the health. At the same time, China has frequently issued a number of policy documents to promote the service life of reducing sugar and advocate the use of natural sweet substances and sweeteners allowed by food safety standards to replace sucrose.
As a result, the wind of "sugar-free" quickly blew.
According to the Report on Market Research and Investment Strategy of Sugar-free Beverage Industry in China in 20021-2027 released by Zhiyan Consulting, the market size of sugar-free beverage industry in China increased from 166 billion yuan in 20 14 to 6.72 billion yuan in 20 18, with a compound annual growth rate of 4/kloc. By 20 19, the market scale of sugar-free beverages in China will reach 9.87 billion yuan, up 46.88% year-on-year.
Among them, there are sugar-free drinks in tea, carbonated drinks and soda water that consumers often drink. Besides the new drinks represented by Yuan Qi Forest, Nongfu Spring, Coca Cola and Master Kong are not far behind.
According to the Analysis Report of Sugar-free Beverage Industry in China in 2020-Evaluation and Forecast of Industry Competition Status and Prospects, in May 2020, among the brands of sugar-free beverage industry in China, the sales of Yuan Qi Forest ranked first, reaching 39%. Sales of Yuan Qi Forest, Coca Cola and Nongfu Spring increased by over 300% year-on-year.
On April 13, in a large supermarket in Beijing, Ran Caijing found bubble water and milk tea under Yuan Qisen's forest, oriental leaves and screams under Nongfu Spring, a spring under Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola, Sprite and Ah! Ha! Small universe and other drinks. Some of these drinks are labeled "sugar-free", some are labeled "0 sugar, 0 calories, 0 fat" and some are labeled "0 sucrose".
Through comparison, it is found that among the above-mentioned eight so-called "0 sugar, 0 calories" drinks, except Oriental Leaf, a subsidiary of Nongfu Spring, the other seven products have added sugar substitutes, that is, sweeteners, to a greater or lesser extent.
Among them, drinks with sweeteners include soda water from Yuan Qi Forest and Ah! Ha! In the small universe, both of them have added erythritol called functional sugar alcohol, which is second only to water in the ingredient list. This can't understand why these "0 sugar" drinks are still so sweet without affecting the taste at all.
The products added with two sweeteners are Coca-Cola Yiquan and Diet Coke, both of which are artificial sweeteners Acesulfame K and sucralose.
The scream of Nongfu Spring, the milk tea in Yuan Qi Forest, Coca-Cola's sugar-free cola and sugar-free sprite all added three or more sweeteners. Xylitol, erythritol and sucralose (sucralose) are added. Erythritol, stevioside and crystalline fructose are added into Yuan Qi forest milk tea; Sugar-free cola and sugar-free sprite added aspartame, acesulfame K and sucrose.
Are the "sugar-free" promoted by these drinks really "healthy and worry-free"?
An Jianhua, vice president of Beijing Electric Power Hospital and a member of the expert group of Beijing Student Nutrition Meal Research Center, told Burning Finance that the main difference between adding different sweeteners to different drinks is the difference in extract and sweetness.
Zang Quanyi, a national first-class nutritionist, told Burning Finance that it is relative, but not absolute, that sugar substitution is more beneficial to health. Compared with sugar, it does have less influence on blood sugar fluctuation and dental caries formation. But for many people who use this "zero sugar" to lose weight, when choosing a drink, we should not only look at the sugar content, but also look at the energy, that is, the energy provided by 100 ml beverage accounts for the percentage of the energy that should be ingested in this day.
At the same time, Zang Quan Yi said that businesses should not emphasize "zero sugar" when promoting and guiding consumers. In addition, some sugar substitutes are controversial, such as aspartame.
KellyWeaver expressed the same view.
KellyWeaver said that although sweeteners only give food sweetness and have low or no energy, the existing epidemiological evidence shows that drinking sweet drinks containing non-nutritive sweeteners does not necessarily reduce the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other diseases.
At the same time, if you just change sugary drinks into sugar-free drinks without changing other unhealthy eating habits and living habits, the health benefits you can get may still be very limited.
"But no matter what kind of drink, whether it contains sugar or not, it needs to be controlled. It is not recommended to drink too much." Zang Quanyi said that for health reasons, drinking less or even not drinking is the best choice.
"The' sugar-free' declared by Yuan Qi Woods in the past was originally a' false proposition', not to mention that he himself showed that it was not really' sugar-free' this time." Industry expert Wang Li said that after this incident, it is doubtful whether the "sugar-free" vibrant forest can be "sweet" in the minds of consumers.
* The title map is from vision china. Xiaoyu, Xiao Jian, Wang Li and Wang Li are all pseudonyms.
* Disclaimer: In any case, the information or opinions expressed in this article do not constitute investment advice for anyone.