Semi-automatic, hand-poured, bring your own cup - details and reversals behind the Manner incident

As the coffee-throwing incident at Manner continued to ferment, a third conflict broke out, pushing Manner to the forefront again. Manner refunded consumers' orders as soon as they were complained about and fired employees at the slightest provocation, which became Manner's biggest complaint.

The incident of a Manner employee pouring coffee continued to ferment, and the newly exposed video of the third conflict incident once again pushed Manner to the forefront.

Unlike all incidents involving consumer rights, this time almost all online opinions sympathized with the barista at Manner. The highly praised comments under Manner’s official blog were all verbal criticisms: “Why open a store if you can’t even protect your employees?” and “Have you apologized to the male employee who was beaten?” In the series of conflicts, Manner’s reflections and apologies seemed insincere.

After the third video was exposed, there were reports that the police intervened in the dispute and the clerk who was beaten received compensation from the customer, but Manner asked the clerk to return the compensation to the customer and apologize to the customer, and the clerk eventually resigned. Angry members of the public asked on Manner's official Weibo whether the news was true.

Although Manner has publicly apologized to consumers, public opinion believes that what Manner needs to do more is to apologize to its employees and create a good working environment for them.

A coffee industry practitioner told Doujiao that what made her most angry after the incident was that Manner did not stand on the side of the employees, but overly favored consumers. "The continuous leak of surveillance videos is most likely the work of internal employees. It is not ruled out that Manner employees are dissatisfied with many of the company's practices."

Manner’s biggest complaint is that it will cancel orders from consumers as soon as they receive complaints and fire employees at will.

A former employee said in an interview with the media that Manner’s first way of dealing with customer complaints is to directly cancel the order. Employees who cause complaints will be "issued a ticket" by the headquarters, and they will be fired if they accumulate three tickets.

A CEO of a service chain industry said: "Accidents happen at any time. If you fire a colleague, it seems that the customer has calmed down. However, this is not in line with the values ​​of an organization. The organization needs to respect everyone in it."

1. The Passion of Manner

"The life of a barista is also a life. A barista serves a white-collar worker. Who is more noble than the other..."

After the Manner conflict broke out, the strict management system became the focus of attention.

According to public information, a Manner barista has to make 300-500 cups of coffee in 8 hours, which means it takes 0.96-1.6 minutes to make one cup on average. His monthly salary is only 5K-8K. He has to stand throughout the whole process and has to count down when going to the toilet, taking out the trash, and eating.

A Manner barista interviewed by Jiemian News said that for Manner stores with daily turnover below 5,000 yuan, the company will only send one person, who will not only make coffee but also take charge of all work such as sorting and cleaning.

Assuming a unit price of around 15 yuan, 15 hours of full operation, and a turnover of 4,500 yuan, 300 cups of coffee need to be made every day, that is, non-stop, and one cup of coffee needs to be made every 3 minutes.

"One person runs a store" has become Manner's unique landscape.

Someone once asked on Zhihu: What is it like to work at Manner Coffee? The answer from PiPi Mao was deafening. From salary to working hours, he asked 13 questions to those who wanted to join Manner: "Can you stand it?" Each question was a heavy blow to the workers.

Some people also describe the life of Manner employees as the "Manner Passion".

Manner has been indifferent to the incidents and has not apologized to its employees. Only the public is speaking up for Manner's baristas. One netizen exclaimed about Manner's inhumane management. "There are cameras in all directions, and a trained team watches the employees every minute of every day. From greeting customers when they come in to washing their hands, to even standing on tiptoe to see if their pants are slightly shorter than their knees. Even if it's just an inch, the second time, their salary can be deducted."

The former employee also said in an interview with Phoenix.com, "I am the only one in the whole store. I deliver food, pack, extract powder, prepare ingredients, take orders, clean... I feel so busy that I can't even straighten my back." "Sometimes I don't have time to eat at the end of the day. I work for 8 hours on an empty stomach. Although we work very hard and our wages are calculated according to working hours, Manner Coffee will always deduct overtime pay."

2. Semi-automatic, hand-poured, bring your own cup - three details behind the Manner incident

When Manner started out, its unique small space and coffee products in the relatively low price range of 15-20 yuan made it quickly popular.

Manner's first store, located at No. 205 Nanyang Road, Shanghai, was just a 2-square-meter stall. In the subsequent store expansion process, it also maintained a small area and light landing approach to enter the Shanghai boutique coffee market.

Manner requires the use of coffee beans that have been roasted within 20 days, and the milk ingredients are from Asahi Vipshop, a local brand positioned in the mid-to-high-end market. The amount of coffee powder used in a single cup has always been 21.5g, which exceeds the industry average. The coffee tastes mellower. Once users are used to drinking Manner, they may find it bland when switching to another brand.

However, the other side of more powder is longer grinding time and the coffee powder is more likely to spill during the production process.

The bigger contradiction is that Manner insists on using semi-automatic coffee machines and even retains a number of hand-brewed products.

Semi-automatic coffee machines require manual operation by baristas. Starbucks and Luckin Coffee, representatives of commercial coffee, mostly use fully automatic coffee machines (coffee machines have bean bins, can grind automatically, and make coffee with one click).

Some people describe the difference between fully automatic coffee machines and semi-automatic coffee machines as "a mobile phone and a SLR camera." Semi-automatic coffee machines can make better-tasting coffee, but they also test the barista's skills and the product quality fluctuates.

Hand-brewed coffee tests the barista's patience even more.

A former Starbucks employee said on Xiaohongshu that if someone wanted to order brewed coffee during Starbucks' peak hours on Saturdays and Sundays, the cashier would directly refuse and say that they couldn't make it because of the shortage of staff. If they really wanted to drink it, they could come back in two hours when there were fewer people.

"Hand brewed coffee is a very troublesome product to make, and a lot of utensils need to be prepared. " The former Starbucks employee said that in Manner's video, the male clerk who was doing hand brewing was doing it on a small cabinet the size of a palm at the bar, which was actually "creating conditions without conditions" to serve consumers.

In addition, Manner adheres to the concept of environmental protection and encourages users to "bring their own cups", and "bring your own cup will reduce 5 yuan." In the video, the female customer who was "catching a flight" used her own cup.

But the problem with bringing your own cup is that it must be ordered manually by the store clerk on site. Users cannot place orders online in advance, which will inevitably result in longer waiting times.

Semi-automatic, hand-brewed, bring your own cup... In other words, Manner has to compete with Luckin Coffee on price, benchmark with independent coffee shops on quality, and compete with Starbucks on profit margin.

In the end, it was natural that the employees endured it all in silence.

A consumer investor told Doujiao: "I have seen the single-store financial model of Manner when it was raising funds. The financial statements that can satisfy the capital market are all based on extremely idealistic and extremely exploitative labor. Therefore, it is easy for a short-lived success to be short-lived, but very few can prosper for a long time. Being a good person and doing good things is the fundamental thing."

Statistics show that Manner Coffee's net profit margin is higher than that of Starbucks and Luckin Coffee, estimated to be over 15%. Currently, Manner's valuation has reached 10 billion yuan (US$2.8 billion).

Compared with peers, in chain coffee stores such as Starbucks, Luckin Coffee, and M Stand, the total number of store employees is usually 3 to 4, and there is a relatively clear division of labor. For example, the store manager is responsible for overall management, and the store employees are responsible for production, cleaning, and taking orders.

“With the customer flow and price of Manner, it is too difficult to make specialty coffee. And if too many free options are opened to customers, of course everyone will have all kinds of strange demands. Just latte art alone can kill people, one wants tulips, another wants swans, and there may be people who want a happy birthday, and why iced latte? In places with high customer flow, it should be fully automatic, turn off free options, try to reduce manual links, and respond with standard products.”

Manner's series of designs obviously rely more on the barista team. However, one of the important reasons why Manner's stores are short of staff is that it cannot recruit enough qualified baristas.

In order to support the continued growth in the number of stores, the requirements for baristas have even been gradually lowered - initially, employees across the country had to go to Shanghai for several weeks of training and pass the assessment before they could enter the bar, but now they can even easily apply for a part-time job.

Manner, which relies heavily on a team of baristas, is still expanding rapidly.

Public data shows that in April this year alone, Manner established 17 stores, and on June 17 this year, Manner opened 4 new stores in one day.

On October 30, 2023, Manner welcomed its 1,000th directly-operated store, completing its expansion goal of “opening 1,000 stores by the end of 2023” ahead of schedule; on December 31, 2023, Manner announced that the number of directly-operated stores nationwide has exceeded 1,200.

As of June 20 this year, data from Zhaimen Canyan showed that Manner had a total of 1,295 stores.

In the game with investors, the founder gradually retreated behind the scenes, and some of the insistence in the early days of entrepreneurship gradually changed. These are mainly reflected in: opening takeaway, a sharp increase in cup output, and a decline in quality control.

Tianyancha shows that from 2018 to 2021, following the 80 million yuan financing from Capital Today, Manner successively received investments from giants such as H Capital, Temasek, Meituan Longzhu and ByteDance. At the end of 2020, Xu Xin of Capital Today held 44.75% of the shares, becoming the largest shareholder.

In particular, in June 2021, after ByteDance entered the market, Manner's valuation rose to US$3 billion (about RMB 19.4 billion). Considering the number of stores at that time, which was less than 200, the valuation of a single store exceeded RMB 100 million. In May 2021, Xu Xin withdrew at a high position, and Manner's shares were snapped up by major funds.

Today, the founders Han Yulong and Lu Jianxia each hold 18.5866% of the shares.

3. Manner’s Revelation: When Consumers Are No Longer God

In fact, Manner's "slowness" is obvious to consumers.

Some netizens joked that at Manner, consumers can win the most humanistic care award - they often have to wait almost 20 minutes for a cup of coffee.

In the eyes of the delivery riders, Manner's "slowness" is also commonplace. "This coffee shop often has promotions, with hundreds of orders sold a day, and only two people are doing it. When the delivery line is online, it is full of orders, but it can't be made, and customers don't want to cancel the orders."

Some psychologists also said that the hysteria of Manner employees may be caused by excessive emotional labor.

Affected by this incident, Manner responded positively, saying that the company attached great importance to it, apologized to the customer immediately, and comforted the barista partner in question . At the same time, the company will strengthen the training and education of all employees to improve their professional quality and service awareness; optimize store operation arrangements to reduce customer waiting time as much as possible and improve customer service satisfaction; strengthen daily care for barista partners, open up care channels for barista partners, improve the working comfort of barista partners, and pay attention to the health of barista partners.

It is reported that the United States also had its own "Manner incident" before, which happened recently in Seattle. A rude male customer complained about the price of the coffee shop he often visited and directly threw coffee at the clerk. The barista was not polite and smashed his windshield with a hammer. Then the point is that after calling the police, the police did not try to smooth things over, but discussed with the barista, "how to do their best to keep this male customer away from this coffee shop." Some netizens dug out the relevant provisions of the United States' Trespass Law, which gives businesses the right to ask customers to leave when necessary. The exercise of this right must be legal and reasonable, and cannot be based on any form of discrimination.

Some scholars also said that behind the whole incident, consumers essentially took advantage of the unfair system, and it was not a simple equal market transaction relationship. At present, all the fast and cheap labor services and cheap fruit and agricultural products are actually built on this unfair system.

Looking at the Manner incident as a whole, the domestic public opinion field, which has always emphasized consumer rights protection, has all "turned sides". People sympathized with the barista and ultimately pointed the finger at the Manner system and algorithm.

Times have really changed.

"Some consumer product companies think that kneeling down can solve the problem. Aren't they too naive and ignorant of public opinion? Please behave yourself."