A tea chain can take in billions of renminbi and still decide some locations should disappear. Nayuki’s published results make that apparent contradiction easier to understand. Start with the accounting, not the queue outside.
Big revenue is only the beginning of the calculation
Nayuki reported RMB 4.921 billion of group revenue for 2024. Its annual results also said it closed or renovated some underperforming stores and ceased operating the Tai Gai sub-brand. A large top line and store retrenchment therefore appeared in the same report. [1]
There is no contradiction in the arithmetic. Revenue records what a business sells. Materials, labor, occupancy, delivery, and other expenses determine how much of it remains. A cup sold for a premium price still has to cover the work and space needed to make and serve it.
For anyone reading a “million-dollar tea shop” headline, three questions come first: which currency, over what period, and is the number for one store or the whole chain? Revenue, profit, and money raised from investors describe different things.
A smaller network, measured properly
The company reported 1,321 self-operated Nayuki stores at June 30, 2025, compared with 1,453 at the end of 2024. That is a net reduction of 132, calculated from its disclosed totals. It is not a count of gross closures: openings, closures, and other network changes can sit behind a net number. Franchise stores were reported separately. [2]
This distinction is easy to lose in a dramatic headline. Fewer stores can reflect retreat, an effort to improve the estate, or several decisions happening at once. The totals establish the change; they do not prove that every departing shop had the same problem.
The 2026 update adds another chapter
In its first-half 2026 presentation, Nayuki reported revenue of RMB 1.8925 billion, down 13.1% from the corresponding 2025 period. The same presentation described a narrower adjusted net loss and lower impairment losses associated with store closures. Revenue remained under pressure while some costs improved. [3]
Those figures do not support a simple story that everything is getting worse—or that the reset is finished. Our reading is that the company is still balancing the size of its network with the economics of operating it. A half-year comparison should stay a half-year comparison; it should not be placed beside a full-year number as if they covered equal time.
What the tea boom can hide
For a new brand, opening stores is an easily understood growth story. For an established one, the less glamorous questions become harder to avoid: how often do people return, what do they spend, and what does it cost to serve them? A photo of a line cannot answer any of those on its own.
Nayuki is a documented case, not a verdict on every Chinese tea chain. The lesson for readers is to separate demand for drinks from the profitability of the system selling them. Expansion makes the map bigger. The accounts show whether the business is becoming stronger.