Author | Ma Hui Liu Xia edit | Zhang Yang The planning of Ruixing’s “Forcing the Palace” failed. In less than half a year, Lu Zhengyao gathered the “old department” and founded the catering brand “Xiaomian Diary”, the registered company is Tongue Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Tongue Technology”). Lu Zhengyao rented an entire floor as an office in Beijing Wangjing Donghuang Building, adjacent to Wework, Bilibili, and Sony. The investment promotion department of Donghuang Building told Leopard Change, This building has 2,000 square meters on the first floor and can accommodate about 200 workstations. The rent is 8.5 yuan per square meter per day. Based on this calculation, the monthly rent exceeds 500,000 yuan. On May 21st, when the Leopard Change visited, some of the staff were already in place. The security of the building revealed that Tongue Technology “moved over about a week ago”, and the company was extremely cautious and required an appointment to enter. According to the recruitment website, Tongue Point Technology has 132 positions being recruited, most of which are technical positions. In May, Tongue Technology intensively registered branches and established branches in Hangzhou, Jinan, Shenzhen, and Shenyang. Judging from the recruitment information, Lu Zhengyao’s tip-of-the-art technology project is in the stage of construction. The main technical teams are in Beijing, Xiamen and Tianjin. The first stores to land may be in Beijing, Xiamen and Nanjing, and these three are currently recruiting store expansion managers to be responsible for selecting store locations. The store in Beijing may be located on the basement level of Donghuang Building. Dianping has already appeared in this store. When Leopard Change visited, he found that the basement level was once a food city, but it is now vacant, but there is no sign of redecoration. That is to say, it will take time for the “Xiaomian Diary” to land. However, according to various clues, what is certain is that after the 2.2 billion yuan fraud, Lu Zhengyao will lead the old ministry back out of the arena again. 1. The “Old Departments” of Shenzhou and Ruixing are gathered together From car rental in Shenzhou to UCAR to Ruixing, Lu Zhengyao’s trader cannot be separated from his “comrades in arms”, working as a “small face diary”, and his first move is to win over the “old department”. In mid-May, Tongue Technology added 5 new foreign investment news. These invested companies, including 4 branches and a Tongue Supply Chain Company, landed in Shenzhen, Jinan, Shenyang, Hangzhou, and Shandong in turn. Tongue Technology seems to have nothing to do with Lu Zhengyao, but if you peel off the list of legal representatives and executives of its branches, you can find that Tongue Technology bears Lu Zhengyao’s “stigma”. Zhang Ying, the actual controller of Tongue Technology, was once a shareholder of UCAR and an old subordinate of Lu Zhengyao. As the company’s relationship unfolded, Leopard Change found that Old people from the Shenzhou department, Zhang Ying, Zhang Jun, Jin Jun, and Lei Liqin, and Ruixing executives Zhou Bin, Li Jun, Lu Yong, and Li Qingyuan all gathered around Lu Zhengyao again. Zhou Bin and Li Jun are former vice presidents of Ruixing and are highly appreciated by Lu Zhengyao. In January 2021, in Ruixing’s “forced palace” incident, the two publicly attacked CEO Guo Jinyi in the circle of friends. After a lapse of 4 months, both of them joined Lu Zhengyao’s camp and became Lu Zhengyao’s leader. Zhou Bin served as the legal representative, executive director and (general) manager of the three companies of Tongue Technology in Shenyang, Hangzhou, and Jinan. Li Jun went south to Shenzhen to serve as the executive director and manager of Shenzhen Passion Tongue Company. May 17, When the leopard change asked Zhou Bin to verify whether he was fully involved in the new project, Zhou Bin did not reply, only that the project would be opened to the outside world later. Zhang Jun, another protagonist of “Forcing the Palace”, former assistant CTO of Ruixing, asked the 300-person technical center team to sign a labor contract with Lu Zhengyao’s new company on the grounds of “changing a new subject”. After Guo Jinyi learned of the situation Rushed to Xiamen to stop. Zhang Jun is the old department of Shenzhou. He used to work in Shenzhou Car Rental. He is an old man who followed Lu Zhengyao from the Shenzhou Department. This time he also followed Lu Zhengyao to test the water and catering, and guarded Lu Zhengyao in the rear as the executive director of Shandong Tongue Supply Chain Company. And manager. Also in charge of the supply chain is Jin Jun, also a senior executive of UCAR, who pursued Lu Zhengyao to establish Ruixing and served as the director of the procurement sourcing group of Ruixing Supply Chain Center. In the financial fraud penalties imposed on UCAR and Ruixing Coffee by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, he and Lu Zhengyao also handed in fines. He is currently the supervisor of the tip of the tongue supply chain company. Lu Yong serves as the supervisor of Tongue Jump (Hangzhou) branch. He was previously the general manager of Ruixing Nanjing branch and the legal representative of Ruixing and Xiaolu Tea in Hangzhou, Yangzhou, Wuxi and other branches. Leopard Change was informed that a Shenyang city manager who had worked in Ruixing for three years also jumped to Tongue Technology to be responsible for restaurant chain management and store layout. Looking at the layout, “Xiaomian Diary” still follows the lightning store opening mode, which is similar to Ruixing’s style of play. According to Ruixing’s speed of opening stores, “Xiaomian Diary” will soon be open in multiple cities. 2. What does “Xiaomian Diary” do? After gathering the old department, what Lu Zhengyao will do is not a simple catering business. Recruitment information shows that Tonguetip Technology is a technology-driven catering company group. It will use big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and 5G communication technology to make catering reproducible. Through the standardized operation of the central kitchen, it will be used on a large scale. Production process to improve the operating efficiency and quality of catering enterprises. Currently, “Small Noodle Diary” may launch Chongqing noodles, beef noodles and other noodles, as well as Yu Fenji, Japanese-style ramen, eel rice, Hainanese chicken rice and other catering flavors. In the trademark application of Tongue Technology Company, not only interesting noodles and other pasta brands, but also Yufenji, Shanqianwei, Tongue Yanxuan and so on. According to Tech Planet news, the trademark of “Xiaomian Diary” was registered as early as January 2019 and has just been bought recently. Lu Zhengyao seemed determined to do something big. In addition to several branches located in Jinan, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Shenyang and other places, Tongue Point Technology is also recruiting HRBP to form branches in Wuhan, Chongqing, Nanjing, and Shanghai. According to tech planet news, Lu Zhengyao will open 500 stores. Currently, Tongue Technology has offices in Xiamen, Tianjin, Wuhan, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Nanjing. Xiamen is the main R&D center with 4 floors of office space. The office address in Tianjin is next to UCAR, less than 300 meters away. The office address in Shanghai is in a shared office in Krypton Space. The Tongue Technology project may also have an online circle. A new employee who joined Tongue Technology wrote on Maimai that he is responsible for the social BU, member relations and portraits of Tongue Technology. Food research and development may have already started, and the company is hiring interns in food research and development and kitchens. From the information obtained, Tongjian Technology will not only gather local specialty snack brands online and offline to build a gourmet city, but it may also develop online gourmet channels, provide semi-finished products, and even build a gourmet e-commerce platform. 3. Can Lu Zhengyao still raise money? The information disclosed by Tongbian Technology shows that Lu Zhengyao’s venture is an asset-heavy operation model, which is exactly the same as the model of Shenzhou Car Rental, Shenzhou UCAR, and Ruixing Coffee. Heavy assets means investing a lot of capital, but After experiencing the turmoil of fraud, Lu Zhengyao’s reputation in the capital market has not been as good as before. Since 2010, Lu Zhengyao has been closely connected with capital. That year, Lu Zhengyao received 1.2 billion and 200 million US dollars in financing from Liu Erhai of Joy Capital and Li Hui of Warburg Pincus, and has since become the “iron triangle” of Shenzhou capital. In 2017, of the 550 million yuan investment received by Ruixing when it was founded, 400 million came from the “iron triangle” Liu Erhai and Li Hui. In the past trading experience, Lu Zhengyao worked with Liu Erhai and Li Hui to raise the company’s valuation through mutual financing, cooperate with asset pledges to obtain financing, and continue to expand rapidly. After listing, they will realize cash out through stock pledge or reduction. In April 2020, Goldman Sachs announced that Haode Investment Inc., controlled by Luckin Coffee’s chairman Lu Zhengyao, had breached its contract. The pledged loan amounted to US$518 million (approximately RMB 3.3 billion). In addition, Dazheng Capital, founded by Li Hui, cashed out US$230 million by reducing its shareholding in Ruixing in February 2020. In the Shenzhou car rental project, Li Hui and Liu Erhai had cashed out US$1.6 billion by reducing their holdings. however, After the Ruixing fraud outbreak, Lu Zhengyao kicked Liu Erhai and Li Hui out of the game in order to prevent the investigation. On the bright side, the “iron triangle” of the Shenzhou system has been broken. China Car Rental CFO Cao Guangyu once bluntly said: “The impact of the Ruixing incident on the company is that the company has no possibility of refinancing at present.” Lu Zhengyao wanted to get capital again not as easy as it used to be. To create a “small face diary”, Lu Zhengyao must first solve the funding problem. From the perspective of multi-brand, multi-store, and technological research and development, the overall investment in Tongue Technology will not be low, but after accelerated expansion, if there is not enough capital reserves, it may be unsustainable to rely solely on Lu Zhengyao. The catering consumption track is a recent investment hotspot. Lu Zhengyao’s “Small Noodle Diary” just cuts into this trend, but will the capital choose to believe him?
You must log in to post a comment.