Originally produced by Ranciyuan (ID: chaintruth) and Rancaijing

Author | Cao Yang and Feng Xiaoting

Editor | Rao Xiafei

"I don't know, it has no impact. Our work here is normal."

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Although the "0 sucrose and 0 sugar" incident caused an uproar among consumers, Ran Finance found during an on-site visit that Yuanqi Forest's production base in Chuzhou, Anhui Province was calm.

"I heard that they are still expanding their production base and hiring a lot of people." Local people in Chuzhou have a good impression of Yuanqi Forest Factory, "Their treatment is better than that in the local area." ."

But in Chuzhou, the drinks of "Yuanqi Forest" are not well known. In the hotel where Ran Finance stayed, Yuanqi Forest products were not found in the product display area of ??the hotel. Instead, there were more regular drinks such as Master Kong and Coca-Cola. On the shelves of local supermarkets, Yuanqi Forest Products has only one "milk tea and jasmine scented" drink with Chuzhou factory information listed among the consignees. Moreover, the prices in local supermarkets are almost the same as those in cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou.

Local residents also don’t know much about Yuanqi Forest. Most of the older citizens said they have never heard of this brand. Only when Yuanqi Forest is mentioned Only when they receive information about local factory construction, they will react, "Oh, you are talking about this, this is just a Beijing brand, and it is just building a factory in Chuzhou." They don't drink much of this kind of "Internet celebrity drink" produced locally, "It's a bit It’s expensive, and I heard it’s sugar-free. It doesn’t have any special taste, and we don’t like it very much.”

But the drink is not very popular among young people in the place where it is produced. Highly sought after.

According to the Beijing News Shell Finance report, during June 18, 2019, Yuanqi Forest sold 2.26 million bottles of drinks on Tmall, winning the "Tmall water drink category sales volume" and ranked first in sales", the total sales volume of the entire network reached 3.23 million bottles, and the total sales exceeded 15 million yuan. In May 2020, Yuanqi Forest's monthly sales reached 260 million yuan, exceeding the entire year of 2018; in the first five months of 2020, a total of 190 million bottles were sold, with total sales reaching 660 million yuan. For the whole year of 2020, Yuanqi Forest achieved sales of nearly 3 billion yuan.

"0 sucrose and 0 sugar" is the selling point of Yuanqi Forest. From the beginning, Yuanqi Forest has been using the "health banner" of "0 sugar, 0 fat and 0 calories" It has quickly become an Internet celebrity brand in the domestic beverage industry. While it has gained a large number of young consumers, it has also gained the favor of capital.

Tianyancha Professional Edition data shows that since its establishment, Yuanqi Forest has maintained a financing rhythm of one year. On March 30, 2021, Yuanqi Forest completed a new round of strategic financing, led by new shareholders Warburg Pincus, L catterton and old shareholder Sequoia Capital China. Although the transaction amount was not disclosed, after the completion of this round of financing, Yuanqi Forest’s valuation has reached US$6 billion.

According to 36Kr’s previous reports, after the strategic financing completed on March 1, 2020, Yuanqi Forest was valued at US$2 billion. In other words, in less than a year, the valuation of Yuanqi Forest has skyrocketed by about three times.

But now, Yuanqi Forest slapped itself in the face.

On April 10, Yuanqi Forest’s official Weibo posted a Weibo post titled “A Belated Upgrade” to redefine “0 sucrose and 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 could easily lead to misunderstandings. The packaging of most milk tea produced from February 4th and all milk tea produced from March 18th has been changed from the original "0 sucrose and low fat" to "low sugar and low fat". All Yuanqi Forest milk tea produced from March 20th will no longer contain crystallized fructose in the raw materials.

As soon as Yuanqi Forest’s Weibo post was posted, it immediately caused an uproar on social media. "Forget it, you cheated me out of my money, and you also cheated me into gaining weight." "Isn't this deceiving consumers?" "Yuanqi Forest got rich by cheating." On various platforms, there are endless accusations against Yuanqi Forest. As of the time of Ran Finance's publication, the Weibo topic #元气 Forest apologizes for promoting zero sucrose# has been read 260 million times and discussed 18,000 times.

Consumers and the industry are not convinced by the explanation of Yuanqi Forest. Kelly Weaver, a Zhihu user and master of epidemiology at the University of Munich, said that judging from the existing research evidence, replacing sucrose with fructose is not only a matter of business integrity, but also a method that will cause additional health risks to consumers. practice.

On April 12, Xinhuanet commented that Yuanqi Forest’s “reminder apology” and red envelopes could not calm the anger of consumers: “Is the apology useful? My Fatty does not accept an apology!” And, as Yuanqi Forest wrote at the beginning of the announcement, “A belated upgrade,” the official is still playing word games and apologizing verbally, but in fact, the core still defines the incident as a “product upgrade.” ” rather than a “marketing accident.”

Lawyer Tang Meng from Shanghai Everbright Law Firm told Rancaijing that Yuanqi Forest has admitted that the ingredient information is inconsistent, and it is indeed possible that some consumers may mistakenly believe that it does not contain any Purchased for sugar. According to Article 28 of the Advertising Law, if the ingredient information of a product is inconsistent with the actual situation and has a substantial impact on purchasing behavior, it can be deemed as false advertising.

According to Article 55 of the Advertising Law, if false advertisements are illegally published, the market supervision and management department shall order them to stop publishing advertisements and order advertisers to eliminate them within the corresponding scope. If the advertising cost cannot be calculated or is obviously too low, the company may be fined up to one million yuan.

In fact, it is not just the Yuanqi Forest. In recent years, under the publicity and awareness that "high sugar accelerates aging and obesity", contemporary young people's "Buddhist" health care With strong awareness, "0 sugar", "0 calories" and "0 fat" have gradually become the pursuit of many young people. As a result, a series of new sugar substitutes and even zero-sugar products have emerged, with corresponding products under well-known brands such as Nongfu Spring, Coca-Cola, and Master Kong.

Sugar substitutes are artificial sweeteners. According to 30,000 Capital, artificial sweeteners refer to chemical substances with sweet taste that have been artificially transformed or synthesized. They have high sweetness and no calories. Most artificial sweeteners are hardly converted by the 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". Consumers need to be more careful when purchasing. Ground screening.

After the "painted skin" is peeled off, whether the image of Yuanqi Forest in the minds of consumers can remain the same depends on whether Yuanqi Forest can win back consumers in the future. ever trust in it. Obviously, this is very difficult.

Despite the great criticism from the outside world, the origin of Yuanqi Forest is still "full of vitality".

On the afternoon of April 13, Ran Finance came to Chuzhou, Anhui, where there is the first self-built production base established by Yuanqi Forest. Several empty cars were parked outside the north gate of the factory. large truck. The trucks are in an orderly manner. After the front truck drives into the factory area, the rear truck will drive to the factory gate so that factory staff can sterilize and disinfect the vehicles. After the front truck is loaded and driven out, the rear truck will drive into the factory area, and the cycle continues.

"I don't know. The number of vehicles (container vehicles with a maximum allowable towing mass of 40,000kg) has not decreased in the past two days. It is almost the same as usual, with 40-50 vehicles per day." That afternoon, there were several truck drivers waiting to load goods chatting outside the north gate. When Ran Finance asked them whether they knew about the recent statement issued by Yuanqi Forest and the heated discussion it caused in society, they all expressed no knowledge of it.

When Ran Finance further asked where the goods are generally shipped, a driver replied, "The factory in Chuzhou is a relatively large production area, and the goods are shipped from all over the country. "According to Ran Finance's observation, the license plate numbers of several trucks parked at the door are mostly Su A and Anhui M, which means that the vehicles are mostly from Nanjing and Chuzhou.

"Everything is normal here." An employee of Yuanqi Forest Factory also said he had no knowledge. The employee told Rancaijing that from his observation, in recent days, , the factory's production has not been affected.

"It won't have any impact, we are still expanding production." The above-mentioned employees told Ran Finance that only the first phase of the project is currently in production, while the second phase of the project started construction last year. The first-phase project is also nearing completion, and completion and commissioning is just around the corner.

In fact, Yuanqi Forest is also recruiting people locally in Chuzhou. In the Chuzhou Talent Network mini program, Yuanqi Forest Company announced 15 job recruitments, and another human resources company posted two jobs related to Yuanqi Forest. Among the 17 recruitment positions related to Yuanqi Forest, the number of recruitments for beverage skilled workers and packaging operators is as high as 30. The monthly salary of packaging operators is in the range of 4,000-7,000 yuan, while the monthly salary of beverage skilled workers is between 6,000 and 6,000 yuan. 7,000 yuan range.

Wang Li was interested in interviewing for a job at Yuanqi Forest. He told Rancaijing that the salary and benefits offered by Yuanqi Forest were considered good in the local area. “The wages of local workers in Chuzhou are It’s about 4,000 yuan, but Yuanqi Forest not only provides five insurances and one housing fund for its employees, but also provides food and accommodation, and its wages are several hundred thousand yuan more than other factories.”

Wang Li told Rancaijing that he only knew that Yuanqi Forest was an Internet celebrity brand, but he had never bought Yuanqi Forest’s products. “Four or five yuan for a bottle of drinks is a bit expensive, and they also say sugar-free, sugar-free drinks. I don’t think it tastes good, so I’ve never bought it.” Rancaijing learned that many locals hold similar views, and staff from several supermarkets said that Yuanqi Forest’s products are best sold locally. The sales volume is not large.

Wang Li said that although he himself has not tasted Yuanqi Forest products, he thinks it is a pretty good company based on past experience. “Beverage and food companies are developing well. The problem mainly depends on the production capacity. Simply put, the more trucks that come to the factory to deliver goods every day, the better the company is. I worked at Yinlu before, and the number of trucks that Yinlu delivered in one day was not as many as the Yuanqi Forest Factory in half a day. ”

In addition to the second phase project of the Chuzhou factory, Yuanqi Forest invested in the construction of production bases in Tianjin and Zhaoqing, Guangdong last year. Yuanqi Forest has invested heavily in building factories in East China, North China and South China, and even plans to build factories in cities such as Wuhan and Chengdu in the future. The motives are obvious. The first is to expand production capacity and innovation, and the second is to Using points to lead to areas, promote the radiation of markets in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and other regions and reduce transportation costs.

After all, before the Chuzhou production base was completed and put into operation in July 2020, the production of Yuanqi Forest products relied entirely on the OEM production model. While recruiting local personnel in Chuzhou, Yuanqi Forest also did not forget to post the "beverage production resident" position on the BOSS direct recruitment. This position is mainly responsible for the production management of the foundry.

Ran Finance visited supermarkets in Beijing, Guangzhou, Chuzhou and other places. There were mainly 6 Yuanqi Forest series products displayed on the shelves, including sparkling water, burning tea and The milk tea series is the most common, and the other three products are Full Score, Bodybuilding Light Tea and Alien, which are not regular products.

When further checking the information on the bottles of Yuanqi Forest products, Ran Finance found that most of the products are produced by Yuanqi Forest entrusted by other parties, and there are several entrusted companies. Among them, companies such as Jianlibao, Huiyuan, Tongshi (for Uni-President OEM), Toyo Beverage and other companies all provide OEM production for Yuanqi Forest products. Interestingly, the milk tea series in question at Diyuanqi Forest, in addition to being produced at the Chuzhou factory, is produced by Tongshi. At the same time, Tongshi is also the entrusted party of Uni-President Assam milk tea.

In sharp contrast to the "everything is normal" production base, there are angry consumers.

"Important misleading, people with high blood sugar are seriously affected." "My family has diabetes and cannot drink sugar. When they say there is no sugar, they often buy it and drink it. This Isn’t it harmful?” “I can still drink it with peace of mind every day, and it’s so expensive.” “How can I trust a product that is plagiarized from the beginning of the name?”… On Weibo topics. Violence abounded.

But Yuanqi Forest obviously did not take this matter seriously. In a Weibo post on April 10, they gave a seemingly perfect solution. plan. "Users who have purchased milk tea in the official Yuanqi Forest e-commerce store can receive a 20 yuan cash red envelope by contacting the store's customer service."

This solution has been adopted by consumers Directly referring to "no sincerity". "It's obviously false propaganda. It says you will compensate consumers, but you still have to make consumers rush to find you. Taobao customer service has failed to read and forced to close the conversation many times..." There are many consumers who have encountered the above situation, "I The customer service staff of Bai Strawberry left the message unread. I searched for it several times for 6 and a half hours, but no one responded at all. I laughed so hard.

Netizen Xiaojian told Rancaijing that after receiving a "late red envelope" message from the Yuanqi Forest flagship store on the morning of April 11, she went to the Tmall flagship store on her own. Communicated with customer service, but after sending multiple messages to customer service, she did not get a positive reply from customer service. Xiaojian has now found the red envelope registration link entrance and registered the information. As of press time, the amount has not been received.

Although the Yuanqi Forest official said, "There are too many users of Milk Tea. Now all accounts in the store have received risk warnings due to too many red envelopes. Please wait patiently." However, the word game caused by the "zero sucrose, low fat" milk tea products owned by Yuanqi Forest seems to have not subsided yet.

Since its establishment in 2016, Yuanqi Forest has relied on the concept of "sugar-free and low-calorie" to target Generation Z. With strong marketing "momentum", Yuanqi Forest has been making rapid progress in the beverage market.

Yuanqi Forest can be called "generous" in marketing. According to Growthbox's product survey report, Yuanqi Forest spent a total of 600 million yuan on online and offline marketing in 2020, and its advertising mainly focused on variety shows and TV series.

According to incomplete statistics from Ran Finance, Yuanqi Forest has sponsored variety shows such as "Our Band", "Sports Boys", "A String of Life" and "Life Is Like a Boil". In 2020, Yuanqi Forest also spent 150 million yuan to win the sponsorship rights for Station B’s Spring Festival Gala.

In addition to variety shows, Yuanqi Forest is still in 2020. Taking advantage of the popularity of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", Zhang Yuqi, who has her own traffic, has been invited to serve as the brand ambassador. According to the official information of Yuanqi Forest, celebrities such as Wei Daxun, Wang Yibo, Li Qin, Reyza, and Sun Yi are also drinking Yuanqi Forest products.

This series of operations has deepened the impression of Yuanqi Forest in the minds of the public, especially young people, and also made Yuanqi Forest favored by capital.

Tianyancha information shows that one year after its establishment, on December 19, 2017, Yuanqi Forest completed angel round financing, and the investor was Challenger Capital. Since then, Yuanqi Forest has basically continued to make rapid progress in financing one round a year.

In 2019, Yuanqi Forest completed Series B and strategic financing of RMB 150 million in just half a year in March and October respectively.

However, Yuanqi Forest, which is growing rapidly, has actually been hearing endless doubts about its "sugar-free" milk tea long before the announcement on Weibo.

Kelly Weaver, a Zhihu user with a master’s degree in epidemiology from the University of Munich, clearly listed Yuanqi Forest Milk Tea as a High sugar/high calorie group.

KellyWeaver said that in fact, the sucrose added to ordinary drinks and the fructose added to Yuanqi Forest Milk Tea are both refined sugars. Therefore, nutritionally speaking, adding sucrose to ordinary drinks is "added sugar", and adding fructose to Yuanqi Forest Milk Tea is also "added sugar". What deserves more attention is that fructose is a sugar that is worse for health than sucrose.

According to his calculations, a 480ml bottle of coffee-flavored milk tea has energy as high as 180*480/100/4.184=206kcal, which is equivalent to a person doing light physical activity. 1/3 of lunch for women aged 18-49.

In addition, regarding the low GI of fructose involved in Yuanqi Forest’s milk tea promotion, Kelly Weaver said that this is purely a word game to avoid the important and take the easy. "GI is the 'glycemic index'. If you consume fructose and then measure glucose, you won't find anything?"

In addition to the ingredients of its milk tea products It has been questioned that Yuanqi Forest adopts Japanese style from its trademark to packaging, but the actual place of production, factory and sales market are all in China. The "pseudo-Japanese" controversy has never stopped.

But at that time, Yuanqi Forest was probably busy building a factory and did not have time to pay attention to word games and the "pseudo-Japanese" controversy.

What kind of gold mine has Yuanqi Forest discovered by “getting rich” with the help of the “sugar-free” concept?

According to IDF data, the number of diabetic patients (20-79 years old) worldwide has reached 463 million in 2019. It is estimated that by 2045, 700 million people worldwide will have diabetes. The IDF predicts that by 2045, China, India and the United States, which have the largest number of diabetic patients in the world, will reach 147 million, 134 million and 36 million respectively.

With the development of consumption upgrading and people’s awakening of health awareness, more and more people are paying attention to the harm of excessive sugar intake to the body.

At the same time, our country is also frequently issuing a number of policy documents to promote sugar-reduced living and the use of natural sweetening substances and sweeteners permitted by food safety standards to replace sucrose.

As a result, the "sugar-free" trend quickly began to spread.

According to the "2021-2027 China Sugar-Free Beverage Industry Market Research and Investment Strategy Consulting Report" released by Zhiyan Consulting, the market size of China's sugar-free beverage industry has increased from 2014 to 2027. It increased from 1.66 billion yuan in 2018 to 6.72 billion yuan in 2018, with a compound annual growth rate of 41.85. By 2019, China’s sugar-free beverage market reached 9.87 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 46.88.

Among them, sugar-free drinks have appeared in tea drinks, carbonated drinks, sodas, etc. that are frequently consumed by consumers. In addition to new drinks represented by Yuanqi Forest, the players entering the game In addition, Nongfu Spring, Coca-Cola, Master Kong, etc. are also not far behind.

"2020 China Sugar-Free Beverage Industry Analysis Report - Industry Competition Status and Prospect Assessment and Forecast" shows that among the brands in my country's sugar-free beverage industry in May 2020, Yuanqi Forest Sales ratio ranked first, reaching 39. The sales of Yuanqi Forest, Coca-Cola and Nongfu Spring increased by more than 300 yuan year-on-year.

On April 13, Ran Finance found sparkling water and milk tea under the Yuanqi Forest brand, Oriental Leaf and Scream under the Nongfu Spring brand in a large supermarket in Beijing. Coca-Cola's Yee Spring, Coca-Cola, Sprite, AH! HA! Small universe and many 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".

A comparison by Rancaijing found that among the above eight so-called "0 sugar, 0 calorie" drinks, except for Oriental Leaf under Nongfu Spring, the remaining seven Products, more or less, have added sugar substitutes, that is, sweeteners.

Among them, drinks with a sweetener added include Genki Forest Sparkling Water and AH! HA! Small Cosmos, both add erythritol, which is called a functional sugar alcohol, and are ranked second after water in the ingredient list. This also makes it difficult to understand why these "zero sugar" drinks taste not affected at all and are still so sweet.

The products containing two sweeteners are Coca-Cola’s Yispring and Diet Coke, both of which contain the artificial sweeteners acesulfame potassium and sucralose. (i.e. sucralose).

Nongfu Spring’s Scream, Yuanqi Forest’s milk tea, and Coca-Cola’s Sugar-Free Coke and Sugar-Free Sprite all have three or more added ingredients. of sweeteners. Among them, Scream adds xylitol, erythritol and sucralose (i.e. sucralose); Yuanqi Forest milk tea adds erythritol, steviol glycosides and crystallized fructose; Sugar-free Coke and Sugar-free Sprite add Aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose.

Are the "sugar-free" promoted by these drinks truly "healthy and worry-free"?

An Jianhua, deputy chief nutritionist of Beijing Electric Power Hospital and member of the expert group of Beijing Student Nutritional Meal Research Center, told Rancaijing that for different sweeteners added to different drinks, their The main differences are in the extract and sweetness.

Zang Quanyi, a national first-level public nutritionist, told Rancaijing that the so-called sugar substitute is more beneficial to health is a relative term, not an absolute one. Compared with sugar, it does have less impact on blood sugar fluctuations and the formation of dental caries.

But for many people who use this "zero sugar" to lose weight, when choosing a drink, they should not only look at the sugar content, but also the energy. That is, the energy provided by a hundred milliliters of drinks accounts for 100% of the daily intake. The percentage of energy.

At the same time, Zang Quanyi said that merchants cannot emphasize "zero sugar" when promoting and guiding consumers. In addition, some sugar substitutes are themselves controversial, such as aspartame.

KellyWeaver expressed the same view.

KellyWeaver said that although sweeteners are substances that only give sweetness to food and have little or no energy, existing epidemiological evidence shows that drinking Sweetened beverages that use non-nutritive sweeteners do not necessarily have a lower risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other diseases.

At the same time, if you only change sugary drinks to sugar-free drinks without changing other unhealthy eating habits and living habits, the health benefits you can obtain may still be very limited. .

"But no matter what kind of beverage it is, whether it contains sugar or not, it needs to be controlled, and excessive drinking is not recommended." Zang Quanyi said that if it is for health reasons, drink less or even Skipping drinks is the best option.

"The 'sugar-free' that Yuanqi Forest has always claimed in the past is a 'false proposition', not to mention that this time he himself stated that it is not truly 'sugar-free'." Expert Wang Li said that after this incident, it is questionable whether the "sugar-free" Yuanqi Forest can no longer be "sweet" in the minds of consumers.

*The title picture comes from Visual China. Xiaoyu, Xiaojian, Wang Li and Wang Li in the article are all pseudonyms

*Disclaimer: Under no circumstances shall the information or opinions expressed in this article constitute Investment advice from anyone.