知名烘焙品牌爆雷！多店突然停摆 创始人直播还债......

This article outlines the full story of popular Chinese bakery brand Oven Studio, from its collapse with nearly 100 stores to its founder starting live streaming to repay debts. It sorts out core details of the incident and provides practical references for general consumers and aspiring baking entrepreneurs.

1. Core incident details: Founded in Wenzhou in 2018, Oven Studio positioned itself as a healthy fresh-baked bread brand focused on low-oil, low-sugar recipes. After gaining popularity, it expanded rapidly, peaking at close to 100 stores. It collapsed in July 2024, with locations across multiple regions shutting down. Public records show it owes 1.53 million yuan in unpaid wages and around 2.6 million yuan in unpaid supplier payments. Only more than 10 stores remain operational today, and the founder has launched live streams to pay off debts, promising 70% of all live streaming revenue will go toward debt repayment. At the current pace, paying off all unpaid wages alone will require more than 1,000 live streams and at least one year of operations to resolve the crisis.

2. Practical reminders: For general consumers purchasing catering stored-value cards, always verify the card's scope of use in advance. For this brand, stored-value cards and group-buy vouchers are only accepted at a small number of directly operated stores, and are not valid at franchised locations. Consumers should redeem remaining card balances as soon as possible to avoid losses if a brand faces collapse. Aspiring baking entrepreneurs should beware of the trap of blind expansion, prioritize stable supply chains and cash flow, and avoid overpursuing rapid store network growth.

The collapse of Oven Studio is a vivid cautionary case for bakery brands across the industry, offering multiple valuable lessons.

1. Product positioning: Oven Studio's focus on low-oil, low-sugar fresh-baked bread aligned with the current consumer trend toward healthy baking, helping it quickly build a loyal customer base. This shows that a clear positioning aligned with consumer demand is the core advantage for a new brand to get off the ground, and fits the current direction of the baking industry.

2. Expansion and operations: When expanding into new regions, Oven Studio adopted the flawed strategy of opening stores first and building out supply chain capabilities later. Its in-house delivery capacity was insufficient, and after its contracted co-packer breached contract and raised prices, cross-regional delivery costs increased by hundreds of thousands of yuan per month, directly draining its cash flow. Meanwhile, it used a principal-guaranteed interest-bearing托管 franchising model to quickly raise capital, leading to chaotic brand management and financial settlement. The limited validity of stored-value cards across stores further worsened the consumer trust crisis.

3. Conclusion: Competition in the baking industry ultimately comes down to the fundamentals of product, operational efficiency and cash flow. Blind expansion turns stores into liabilities that drain the brand, and can ultimately bring down the entire business.

This case sorts out risks to avoid during expansion for offline bakery sellers in the baking segment, and summarizes actionable lessons for crisis response.

1. Risk warning: Blind cross-regional expansion is the biggest operational risk. Rapid store expansion when your own supply chain and delivery capacity is insufficient will sharply push up logistics, warehousing and labor costs. Any supply chain disruption will directly hit cash flow. While a principal-guaranteed interest-bearing托管 franchising model can quickly raise capital, it is extremely difficult to manage, and often leads to messy stored-value settlement and eroded brand reputation, laying the groundwork for eventual collapse.

2. Reference for crisis response: After the collapse, Oven Studio's founder did not flee, instead choosing to address the issue publicly and launch a live-streamed self-rescue effort, with a clear commitment that 70% of revenue would go to debt repayment. This transparent approach won a degree of public understanding, and sellers facing operational crisis can draw on this response strategy.

3. Opportunity outlook: Healthy baking remains a highly recognized segment today. Low-oil, low-sugar fresh-baked bread still has strong market demand. Sellers that manage supply chains and cash flow well can still achieve steady growth.

This case offers multiple insights for production factories and central kitchen operators in the baking industry, and clarifies product demand and business opportunities in the sector.

1. Product demand: Consumers today widely accept healthy baking, and there is strong market demand for low-oil, low-sugar, naturally fermented fresh-baked bread. Factories can develop products tailored to this demand to meet the production needs of brand partners, and capture industry growth opportunities.

2. Co-packing cooperation insights: When baking brands expand cross-regionally, they have high demand for localized regional co-production. Co-packing factories that can deliver stable supply at reasonable prices can secure long-term cooperation opportunities. Unilateral contract breaches and price hikes do not only drag down partner brands, but also cost factories their chances of long-term collaboration.

3. Operational insights: Factories should align their production capacity and delivery supporting capabilities with the pace of their brand partners' expansion, and should not blindly follow expansion while neglecting internal capacity building. Factories can also embrace new channels such as live streaming, which can help ease cash flow pressure during crises.

This case exposes multiple pain points for customers during the expansion of baking brands, points out directions for business development for baking-related service providers, and sorts out industry demand.

1. Core industry pain points: When small and medium-sized baking brands expand cross-regionally, they generally lack supporting capabilities in cold chain delivery, regional co-production and warehouse management. Building an in-house central kitchen is prohibitively expensive, while partnering with external co-packers often brings risks like price hikes, contract breaches and unstable supply. This creates strong unmet demand for supply chain supporting services. In addition, most franchised baking brands lack mature franchising management systems, leading to fragmented stored-value settlement and group-buy redemption that easily trigger consumer trust crises.

2. Solutions and business opportunities: To address supply chain pain points, third-party supply chain service providers can launch customized cross-regional co-production and cold chain delivery services for small and medium-sized baking brands to meet their expansion needs. To address management pain points, digital service providers can develop membership settlement and unified redemption management systems tailored for baking franchising systems to help brands standardize operations. Crisis PR service providers can also develop bundled solutions for live-streamed self-rescue and public communication for collapsed brands, to help them mitigate crises.

This case exposes multiple problems in franchise recruitment, live streaming and group buying for baking brands, and provides reference for operational management and risk mitigation for relevant platforms.

1. For franchise recruitment platforms: Many baking brands use principal-guaranteed interest-bearing托管 franchising models to expand rapidly. This model, which promises fixed returns, carries inherently high default risk, and a collapse can harm the interests of franchisees and consumers. Platforms should strengthen screening for this high-risk model during recruitment review to pre-empt risks.

2. For local life and live streaming platforms: Some brands sell group-buy vouchers across all platforms, but only allow redemption at a small number of stores. Deliberately concealing this rule easily leads to consumer complaints. Platforms should strengthen review of group-buy voucher redemption rules, require merchants to clearly mark eligible stores, and protect consumer interests.

3. Insights for daily operational management: Platforms should continuously monitor the operational status of participating brands. For brands with negative news such as store closures and unpaid wages, platforms should issue timely risk warnings, restrict non-compliant marketing activities, and prevent broader harm to stakeholder interests.

This case provides a typical failure case for bakery and catering industry research, reflects emerging new problems in the expansion of China's current baking industry, and offers high value as a research sample.

1. New industry problems: China's baking segment has grown rapidly in recent years, and many emerging brands adopt aggressive expansion strategies to capture market share quickly. They expand cross-regionally without building out supporting supply chain capabilities in advance, and rely on high-interest托管 franchising models to raise capital quickly. This model relies on continuous new store openings to raise capital and sustain cash flow; once the pace of store openings slows, the brand collapses immediately. This is a new, highly noteworthy risk in current industry expansion.

2. Business model research: The principal-guaranteed interest-bearing托管 franchising model adopted by Oven Studio is essentially a quasi-financial expansion model. While it can quickly scale store count in the short term, it lacks effective management of offline stores and creates continuous repayment pressure. This case fully demonstrates the unsustainability of this model, and its risk points are worthy of in-depth research.

3. Industry development research: This case also confirms the conclusion that baking industry competition ultimately comes down to the fundamentals of product, efficiency and cash flow, and provides real-world empirical evidence for research into sustainable development models for the baking industry.