Nayuki Selling Raw Dough?! Shop Responds: Baked to Be More Tender

Nayuki's Tea: The Price of Food Safety Problems

During the years when new-style tea brands were springing up and fighting hard for position, Nayuki managed to become the first of them to go public, earning the title of "the first listed share of new-style tea" and the credit for taking the plunge first. Achieving that in an extremely competitive field made the company look mature and assured. Lately, though, Nayuki has shown an unusually "tender" side, quite out of character.

On May 27, a woman in Shanghai ordered a baked item, a durian bread, from Nayuki's Shanghai Hongkou District White Magnolia Plaza store through a food delivery platform. When she ate it, she found the dough inside stretchy and stringy, and suspected she had been sold undercooked bread. She then applied for a refund through the delivery platform, but the merchant refused.

The manager of that store explained that the problem might have come from the oven failing to reach the right temperature, which left the bread a little too tender.

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

Some netizens commented that given how the incident unfolded, the manager handled it immaturely and should have simply apologized and offered a refund from the start.

Others pointed out that Nayuki's product quality is not what it used to be.

Still others said food safety is simply too important to treat lightly.

Previous Food Safety Incidents

Nayuki had already made headlines on Weibo before, when a store in Tianjin was found using expired milk. Law enforcement officers fined that store 5,000 yuan for using expired raw materials, and the company's market value evaporated by more than 20 billion.

It was not the first time Nayuki's food safety problems had been reported. On April 22, the "Annual Report on the Status of Consumer Rights Protection in China (2021)" issued by the China Consumer Association specifically named and criticized Nayuki's milk tea stores for using rotten fruit.

In August 2021, Xinhua News Agency reporters went undercover in several Nayuki stores and found problems in the back kitchen: cockroaches crawling around, rotten fruit, unwashed rags, and inaccurate labels. The findings laid Nayuki's food safety problems bare and sent the company's share price down by half, only a little over a month after its listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

According to incomplete statistics compiled by Caijing Tianxia Weekly, Nayuki's stores or branches have received at least 20 administrative penalties, mainly involving expired products, waste disposal, and fire safety. Nayuki has paid at least 190,000 yuan in fines, of which 145,000 yuan were food safety related. It sells the most expensive tea, yet carries serious food safety problems, turning profit into loss.

Consumer Trust at Risk

After the food safety problems were exposed, Nayuki apologized under public pressure and closed the stores involved for rectification. Even so, it seems likely that similar problems will resurface before long. Some netizens have remarked on how often Nayuki turns up on trending topics.

With food safety problems surfacing again and again and the media reporting them day after day, many consumers have gradually grown numb to the whole thing.

Even so, food safety in the restaurant industry still deserves serious attention, because it concerns people's own health and safety. The decline in product quality has already left consumers with a poor impression of the Nayuki brand. Even if Nayuki keeps expanding through cross-industry ventures, can consumers still trust it the way they once did?

Image source: Internet

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