What the Nayuki's Tea Bread Controversy Means for Coffee and Tea Brands

A Shanghai consumer found stretchy, undercooked dough inside a durian bread bought from Nayuki's Tea on May 27 through a delivery platform. The store said the oven had not reached its set temperature, calling the bread "baked on the softer side," and rejected her refund request. She complained through the brand's WeChat account and the local 12315 hotline, and the case spread quickly online.

Nayuki's Tea was the first new-style tea brand to list publicly and was long treated as an industry benchmark. The incident has revived attention on earlier complaints about expired milk, spoiled fruit and kitchen disorganization. As competition in the sector intensifies, the episode shows how quickly a single underbaked item can reopen questions about a listed brand's quality control.

As competition in the new-style tea beverage sector heats up, Nayuki's Tea was the first to land on the capital market, securing the title of "China's first publicly listed new-style tea brand" and was once regarded as an industry benchmark. Recently, however, a consumer in Shanghai found raw dough that could be stretched into strings inside a durian bread she bought from Nayuki via food delivery. The store explained it was "baked on the softer side," and her refund request was also rejected. The incident quickly fermented on social media, once again bringing Nayuki's past food safety issues back into the public eye—from expired milk and rotten fruit to chaos in the kitchen. What exactly has happened to this haloed brand?

At a stage when new-style tea brands are emerging one after another and competition is nearly cutthroat, Nayuki's Tea was the first to complete its listing, claiming the title of "China's first publicly listed new-style tea brand" and becoming the first company in the industry to successfully clear the hurdles. Being able to achieve such a result in a highly involuted market is enough to show that Nayuki has its sophistication on the operational level. But unexpectedly, Nayuki has recently shown a rather "immature" side.

On May 27, a female consumer in Shanghai ordered a durian bread from Nayuki's Tea's Shanghai Hongkou District White Magnolia Plaza store through a food delivery platform. While eating, she found that the dough inside the bread could be pulled up in one whole piece, and suspected she had bought a product that was not fully baked. She then initiated a refund request on the delivery platform, but the merchant rejected it.

The store manager's explanation for the matter was that the problem might have been that the oven temperature did not reach the set value, causing the bread to be underbaked and "baked on the softer side."

The woman did not buy the store manager's explanation. She complained about the store through Nayuki's Tea's WeChat official account and also reported it to the local 12315 hotline.

Some netizens said in comments that, with things having escalated to this point, the store manager involved appeared immature in handling the matter and should have taken the initiative to apologize and process the refund.

Other netizens said bluntly that the quality of Nayuki's Tea products is no longer what it used to be.

Still other netizens stressed that food safety is always the top priority.

In fact, this is not the first time Nayuki has been caught up in a food safety storm. Previously, a Nayuki's Tea store in Tianjin made Weibo's trending searches for using expired milk. Law enforcement authorities fined the store 5,000 yuan for using expired ingredients, and the company's market value evaporated by more than 20 billion yuan as a result.

Even earlier, on April 22, the China Consumers Association's "Annual Report on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests in China (2021)" directly named and criticized Nayuki's Tea shops for using rotten fruit.

In August 2021, Xinhua reporters conducted undercover visits to the kitchens of multiple Nayuki stores and exposed a series of problems, including cockroaches crawling everywhere, rotten and spoiled fruit, rags that had not been washed for a long time, and false label information. This thoroughly confirmed Nayuki's shortcomings in food safety and also caused Nayuki's stock price to halve just over a month after its listing in Hong Kong.

According to an incomplete tally by Caijing Tianxia Weekly, Nayuki's stores or branches have cumulatively received at least more than 20 administrative penalties, with problems mainly concentrated in areas such as expired products, waste disposal, and fire safety. The total amount of fines Nayuki paid for this was no less than 190,000 yuan, of which 145,000 yuan was directly related to food safety. Selling the highest-priced tea beverages while frequently breaking out in serious food safety problems, Nayuki ultimately swung from profit to loss.

After the food safety problems were exposed, Nayuki publicly apologized under public pressure and ordered the stores involved to close for rectification. However, before long, similar problems often reappeared. Some netizens sighed, asking why Nayuki keeps appearing in trending searches every few days.

As food safety incidents play out repeatedly and media reports repeat similar content day after day, many consumers have gradually become numb to it.

Nevertheless, food safety issues in the catering industry still cannot be ignored, as they directly concern consumers' personal health. Continuously declining product quality has long left Nayuki with a poor impression in consumers' minds. Even if Nayuki keeps crossing boundaries and extending its business lines, can consumers still give it the full trust they once did?

Image source: Internet

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.