How Much Does It Cost to Open Up a Coffee Shop? Heytea Launch Pace

Heytea said it would release its first Tea Special product, Guava Snow Pekoe Jasmine King, on August 13 with a limited buy-one-get-one-free promotion. Behind the launch, store employees report growing production pressure: the company has put out at least seven new products in two months, covering milk tea, fruit and vegetable tea, and smoothies, with the menu updated roughly every one to two weeks.

Workers describe a steady pile-up of tasks, from washing and cutting fruit to stirring cheese glutinous rice and blending smoothies, and complaints have spread on social media. The case highlights the tension between fast menu rotation and store labor, a calculation that matters to anyone weighing how much does it cost to open up a coffee shop, where staffing and a manageable coffee restaurant menu directly affect daily operations and service quality.

Heytea recently announced that it will launch its first "Tea Special" product, "Guava Snow Pekoe Jasmine King," on August 13, accompanied by a limited-time buy-one-get-one-free promotion, attracting widespread consumer attention. However, behind the frequent release of new products, store employees are facing increasingly heavy production pressure. According to statistics, Heytea has launched at least 7 new products in the past two months, covering categories such as milk tea, fruit and vegetable tea, and smoothies, with the menu updated almost every 1 to 2 weeks. From washing and cutting fruit to stirring cheese glutinous rice, to making smoothies, employees' workload keeps piling up, and a large number of complaints have appeared on social media. This article sorts out the contradiction between new product launches and employee burden, presenting the real voices behind the tea beverage industry's rapid product launches.

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Recently, many users on social platforms revealed that Heytea will launch its first "Tea Special" product on August 13. It is understood that the new product is named "Guava Snow Pekoe Jasmine King," containing nine-times-scented Jasmine King tea infusion, milk, and guava juice, etc., and looks quite appealing.

From the poster, Heytea will also launch a limited-time buy-one-get-one-free promotion on the day the new product is released. The launch of the new product together with the promotional activity immediately attracted a large number of fans' attention, and many users have already become interested, planning to bring friends along to check in and try it on the day the new product launches.

However, although the news of Heytea's new products delights loyal users, it makes many Heytea workers feel worried, and they feel mountain-like pressure even before the activity arrives. According to incomplete statistics, Heytea has launched at least 7 new products in the past two months, including milk tea, fruit and vegetable tea, smoothies, etc. Basically every 1 to 2 weeks, its mini-program menu is updated, with one or two products marked "new product launch" appearing.

But while new products are continuously put on the shelves, Heytea employees' workload is increasing. They said that the original fruit and vegetable tea series already turned the tea shop's preparation room into a restaurant kitchen, and tasks such as washing vegetables, cutting melons, and peeling grapes made workers extremely troubled.

Afterward, the brand updated the cheese glutinous rice series. Milk tea workers were upgraded from kitchen assistants to chefs. Every day when the store opened, they had to stand in front of the induction cooker constantly stirring the cheese glutinous rice in the pot. After a few days, the muscles on their arms became much firmer. Entering midsummer, smoothie series products appeared one after another, and Heytea store employees had yet another task of making smoothies, helplessly saying that "the smoothie pitcher has been shaken into tenosynovitis."

Many Heytea milk tea workers admitted that the new products developed by the brand are becoming more and more cumbersome to make, so their daily workload keeps increasing. In addition, influenced by promotional activities such as the official buy-one-get-one-free offers for new products and delivery discounts from platforms, stores sometimes have to experience dark moments of order explosions, and all store staff are exhausted under the urging of customers and riders, with grievances too numerous to mention.

In response, a worker posted a helpless complaint on social media—"Heytea R&D department, have you really considered the employees' workload?"—expressing the sentiments of thousands of Heytea store employees and causing countless workers to pour out their grievances in the comments section.

"The barbecue stall masters don't sprinkle as much as we do at the drink assembly station." "They only put items on the menu and never take them off; just for cheese alone we have to make several kinds, and there's no place to put them!" "Yesterday it successfully made me cry." "One cloud top uses five cheese containers; there's directly no space at the serving area." "Making smoothies has built up my muscles." "Working part-time at Heytea for half a year, my friend and I (think) this job is second only to hauling bricks at a construction site."

It is understandable that Heytea attracts a large number of consumers to pay by continuously launching new products, but in the eyes of Heytea workers, those products whose popularity has faded and which fewer and fewer users buy can actually be removed from the menu, so as to avoid stores wasting materials, reduce their workload, and let workers catch their breath and rest amid the busyness.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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