Consumers Wait in Line for 6 Hours at New Chayan Yuese Tea Pop Up Store at Wenheyou in Shenzhen
On April 1, the trendy Wenheyou food court brand from Changsha launched in Shenzhen. To promote the launch, Wenheyou invited fellow Changsha brand Chayan Yuese to open a pop-up store within the food court. Chayan Yuese is a very popular new tea brand and this is its first store in Shenzhen.
Consumers flocked to Wenheyou and videos of the massive (and I mean MASSIVE) lines quickly made it on Weibo’s hot topic ranking board. One person shared that they booked a table and the system said there were 60,000 tables in front of them.
When Chayan Yuese opened its first location in Wuhan, people were waiting for 3 hours to get a drink. But that’s nothing compared to Shenzhen. Can you imagine waiting for 6 hours under the sun just to get a drink? It’s so crazy, but many people did it!
With such popularity, there were scalpers (known in China as Yellow Cow 黄牛) buying drinks for others. People reported online that, on opening day, people were buying Chayan Yuese drinks for 200 to 300 RMB. That’s around 10-15x higher than the usual price.
There Are Many Tea Brands in China, Why Are People so Excited about Chayan Yuese?
As a Cantonese person, I am so happy with the fact that the tea brand Chayan Yuese has finally opened a store in Guangdong! Why?
The brand was founded in 2013 in Changsha, Hunan Province. Though it is super popular among consumers, especially young people, in its first 7 years in business it never expanded beyond Changsha. It was only at the end of 2020 that it finally opened a store in nearby Wuhan, not those first tier cities like Shenzhen or Shanghai, but a second tier city Wuhan.
While consumers can get Hey Tea and Nayuki Tea everywhere, they have only been able to get Chayan Yuese in Changsha. It has even become a top must-do for travelers to the city. I have friends who travelled to Changsha, and they all told me Chayan Yuese’s drinks were very worth a try. One of them even had three drinks from Chayan Yuese every day while she was staying in Changsha.
Were People Just Waiting for Chayan Yuese? Or Also to Visit Wenheyou?
Trying to be modest, on the day of the launch when there were huge lines outside, Chayan Yuese posted on Weibo saying not all of the people waiting in line were there because of them. They said many people were probably also there to visit other food stalls in Wenheyou (文和友).
A lot of people responded to the post saying that they were in fact there because of Chayan Yuese. But this was on the brand’s Weibo account so that only makes sense. It’s likely many people went there for both.
I kept hearing Wenheyou mentioned over the past two years. So what exactly is Wenheyou? How did this food court become so popular among young people?
What is Wenheyou?
Wenheyou was created in 2011 and it defined itself as a ‘dining mall’. It is essentially a massive, curated, cooly decorated food court that also has some other shops as well.
Similarly to Chayan Yuese, from 2011 to 2020, it was only located in Changsha. For many years it only focused on its own food, and had specific stores for local street food specialities like shrimp, sausage and stinky tofu or Chou Doufu (臭豆腐). In 2018, after Wenheyou got 70 million RMB in investment, it spent nearly 100 million RMB to create a massive food court or ‘dining mall’, attracting more than 100 brands to join.
In 2020, Wenheyou finally stepped out of Changsha and opened a location in Guangzhou. And in 2021, it opened this location in Shenzhen. According to Wenheyou’s plan, it will keep opening new stores in Beijing, Shanghai, HongKong and Los Angeles over the next 5 years.
Vintage Decor Makes it Popular on Social Media
Wenheyou’s decor is very vintage. It feels like you are going back to the 1980s or 1990s with those old billboards, mottled walls and faded colours. A key reason why Wenheyou often gets a lot of buzz every time it opens a new store is that many people take photos with it and share those photos on social media. There are over 60K posts about Wenheyou on Xiaohongshu.
Wenheyou’s Location And Localized Strategy
Wen Bing (文宾), founder of Wenheyou, aims to have his dining malls locate near Hermės and other top luxury fashion brands, and he also wants the store to located on the first floor of shopping mall. Its locations in Changsha and Guangzhou meet these requirements. But for Shenzhen, the location of Wenheyou is still away from The Mixc (万象城), a luxury shopping mall.
When it opens in a new location outside of Changsha, Wenheyou has a mix of Changsha food as well as local specialties. For example in Shenzhen, it has lots of vendors selling oysters, which are popular in Shenzhen.
Even though Wenheyou couldn’t find a location near a luxury mall in Shenzhen like it had hoped, it still got a good location. It is near the highway and train line connecting Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The mall’s old and vintage exterior decor is very visible from the highway.
Reception for the Guangzhou Wenheyou Location Not as Positive as the Shenzhen One
Though Wenheyou is extremely welcomed in Changsha and Shenzhen (at the moment), it doesn’t seem to have equal popularity in Guangzhou. When it first opened in the city, it was common for people to wait for 2,000 tables. But since March 2021, if you go there during workdays, you basically don’t have to wait.
There is a lot of turnover with food vendors constantly coming in and out. And on social media, some people are saying Wenheyou Guangzhou is not worth visiting and articles analysing why the store was not as popular as before.
This might be because when Wenheyou opened its store in Guangzhou, it copied and pasted its Changsha menu to the city. They didn’t localize enough.
What’s more, Xiaohongshu’ users are saying the food is not tasty and the prices are higher than similar food at other locations. Also, Guangzhou is known for its night markets and for being a food heaven, regardless of whether its local food, other provinces’ food or even international food. It’s very easy for people living in Guangzhou to find a place to have local and tasty Changsha food, even the street that near my university has many shrimps and stinky tofu stores. So besides the cool decor, Wenheyou didn’t bring anything new to Guangzhou.
Maybe in Beijing, Shanghai, and other cities it will be able to stand out more.
Is Wenheyou Shenzhen Only Popular Because of Chayan Yuese?
At the moment, the Shenzhen store seems to do great. But after three months, once the Chayan Yuese store leaves and everyone has daka (打卡) or gotten their cool pictures for social media, will people actually continue to go?
Either way, I am quite curious to see what location it will pick in Shanghai and can’t wait to have a go!
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