What does the Guming closure say about les cafe collabs?

A social media post said a Guming store in a school cafeteria closed right after the Honkai: Star Rail collaboration ended. Equipment, advertisements and promotional materials disappeared overnight, leaving only the light box sign. The poster later said the cause was lease expiration or operating losses, not the collaboration.

The store had been busy during the event, and the brand drew heavy attention with products in short supply and thin staffing. The episode shows that an order surge does not equal profit, a caution for any les cafe or tea concept, though the same rush affects how to use an american coffee machine during peak hours.

Recently, a post on social media about a Guming campus store suddenly closing after a collaboration event ended sparked widespread discussion. The poster noticed that the store was still operating during the "Honkai: Star Rail" collaboration, but as soon as the event ended, it was emptied overnight—equipment and promotional materials all vanished, leaving only the light box sign still in place. Netizens speculated whether the store had gone bankrupt because of the collaboration, but the poster later clarified that the closure was actually due to lease expiration or operational losses, with no direct link to the collaboration. This incident reflects the hidden business risks behind the tea beverage brand collaboration craze: a surge in orders does not equal profitability, and after the hype fades, some stores still cannot escape closure.

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Recently, a post on social media titled "The first Guming store to be driven out of business by the Honkai: Star Rail collaboration" attracted much attention and discussion among netizens. According to the poster, the emptied Guming store in the photos was located in a school cafeteria and was still operating during the brand's collaboration event with the game "Honkai: Star Rail." The poster had even visited the store to buy the collaboration drinks.

Surprisingly, just as the collaboration event came to an end, when the poster passed by again, they found that the store's machinery, equipment, advertisements, and promotional materials had all disappeared overnight. The entire store was completely emptied, with only the store's light box sign still not removed.

This sudden situation truly astonished the poster. Recalling Guming's recently highly popular collaboration event, they couldn't help but joke that this store was "the first Guming store to be driven out of business by the Honkai: Star Rail collaboration."

Unexpectedly, after the post was published, many onlookers were drawn in and expressed their views in the comments section. In their opinion, Guming had gained a great deal of attention recently due to the collaboration event, and stores everywhere were doing extremely brisk business, with successive situations of products being in short supply and insufficient staff.

Therefore, they speculated that perhaps the store owner had taken the store's machinery, equipment, materials, and employees to support other nearby stores that were overwhelmed with orders. "Usually they're transferred to another store, it's not necessarily really the last day," "It might be the same owner moving things to another store," they said, believing the poster's joke about "going bankrupt overnight" was not quite appropriate.

However, after sparking widespread discussion, the poster edited the text again to give a specific explanation of the reason for the Guming campus store's closure, saying that the store's closure happened to coincide with the collaboration period, "it's just that the timing was coincidental that I said this," and explaining that "my original intention was not to say the collaboration was the direct cause of the closure. The direct cause of the closure was the lease expiring without renewal / the store operating at a loss."

At the same time, students at the school where the store was located also spoke up to confirm that this Guming store had not temporarily suspended business. Some shared screenshots of discussions on the campus website, saying that the store might have been unable to continue operating due to an economic dispute, and so it fled overnight a few days earlier, disappearing directly from the official mini-program.

However, although they knew the wildly popular collaboration event was not the trigger for the Guming campus store's closure, some netizens still felt somewhat confused. After tea beverage stores collaborate with popular IPs, sales surge, so they should logically make a fortune during the event period. But in reality, "our school's Guming also went bankrupt after collaborating with an IP," "I also have one here that went bankrupt right after the Love and Deepspace collaboration."

Regarding the onlookers' confusion, some tea beverage industry practitioners said that these collaboration events, which attract widespread consumer attention, bring stores only a temporary surge in orders. It looks like business is booming, but in reality, "the more orders, the more losses," and it is not necessarily as consumers believe, that "more orders means more money." Therefore, once the event ends and the hype fades, tea beverage stores in poor operating condition will only return to square one and close down for various practical reasons.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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