HEYTEA shut down its name-changing feature merely one week after it was launched, and it accidentally got involved in a borderline inappropriate content controversy again.
In early July, HEYTEA outlets in Shenzhen and Beijing quietly launched a DIY drink customization function in their mini-program. Consumers can freely choose tea bases, fruit juices, dairy products, toppings and cloud cream to make a new drink that does not exist on the menu, and even name it by themselves in the end, which means HEYTEA has handed over the "naming right" to users.
As soon as the news came out, netizens all became masters of meme creation. At first, most office workers mocked themselves with names like "emotionally stable water", "made orange by capital" and "original pulp of livestock fodder" to vent their work pressure.
Some also joked about competing brands by naming their drinks after rival bubble tea chains such as Yi Dian Dian, Cha Ba Dao and Ka Wang Ka.
Later, the "string of memes" trend emerged, and some targeted names became widely popular, such as "black-skinned sports student" and "XX bath water". This kind of slightly offensive but not obviously aggressive behavior was just laughed off by most people.
HEYTEA's DIY trend rose rapidly, with the number of views on related Douyin topics exceeding 100 million, self-created formula review notes flooding Xiaohongshu, and outlets welcoming a new wave of order surges.
As the activity spread more widely, netizens spared no effort to attract attention, with vulgar memes, dark humor memes and sexual hints emerging in endlessly, and the situation gradually developed in an uncontrollable direction.
Eventually, this handover of "naming right" only lasted for about a week. Around July 12, some users posted that "HEYTEA seems to have disabled the edit function for product names because some DIY names are too vulgar".
After actual testing, the entry for custom name editing has indeed been closed, and the default name is now "My DIY HEYTEA". Some netizens in the comment area said, "Some people make me feel like they are too repressed, they can relate everything to vulgar jokes".
In fact, there are many examples in the gaming circle where handing over the naming right to users backfires. The official League of Legends once launched a free name change activity for the "Game Safety Month", but a large number of players used this opportunity to create a large number of indecent nicknames with homophonic memes, which completely deviated from the original intention of the activity.
Especially for short video platforms dominated by UGC content, strict review mechanisms will be established to prevent a large number of illegal content from appearing on the platform, which will affect the platform's ecology and community atmosphere.
HEYTEA's situation was particularly severe, because this was not the first time it had stumbled on "naming issues".
In June 2024, HEYTEA launched a new light milk tea product "Xiao Nai Zhi" (Little Milk Gardenia) in collaboration with the Finnish brand Marimekko. The product was positioned to feature the perfect blend of tea aroma, milk aroma and gardenia aroma. However, after the new product was launched, it was complained by netizens as "too vulgar" and "very embarrassing to order offline" because its pronunciation was accused of being a suggestive homophone.
Some netizens said bluntly, "Especially for friends in Sichuan, who often can't distinguish between front and back consonants, the name will sound more explicit when pronounced". The controversy quickly fermented, and the hashtag #HEYTEA new product name Xiao Nai Zhi accused of being suggestive# rose to the 5th place on Weibo hot search list, with more than 87 million views.
On June 28, HEYTEA's mini-program order page renamed "Xiao Nai Zhi" to "Xiao Bai Zhi" (Little White Gardenia). HEYTEA's customer service responded: "For the naming of this product, we have always only wanted to express the natural gardenia aroma and milk aroma of the product. According to everyone's feedback, we made the change to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding". The "skim milk Xiao Nai Zhi" in the same series was also renamed "skim milk Xiao Bai Zhi".
Looking further back, HEYTEA's history of controversial suggestive marketing is even longer.
In April 2019, HEYTEA interacted with Durex on Weibo. Durex posted a poster with the caption "Not a single drop is allowed to remain tonight", and HEYTEA commented under that Weibo post: "You always have my cheese on your lips". The interaction between the two brands was accused of having sexual hints, which aroused a lot of criticism from netizens. The National Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications Office reposted the article, naming and criticizing this "soft porn" advertisement, and HEYTEA later posted an apology on Weibo.
In November 2023, HEYTEA launched the "Fo Xi" (Buddha-like) tea latte series in collaboration with the Jingdezhen China Ceramics Museum, with themes of the Wordless Bodhisattva, the Joyful Arhat and the Tiger Subduing Arhat respectively. Less than a week after the products were launched, the Shenzhen Municipal Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau interviewed HEYTEA's representatives on December 1. On December 3, all related products were removed from shelves. It only took a few days from launch to removal.
If we go further back to 2012, HEYTEA's predecessor was still called "Huang Cha" (Royal Tea). Because the word "Huang" carries a royal connotation, the trademark could not be registered, and counterfeit "Huang Cha" shops grew wildly. The founder Nie Yunchen finally spent 700,000 yuan to purchase the "HEYTEA" trademark, and officially renamed "royaltea Huang Cha" to "HEYTEA". This forced name change built a legal moat for the brand.
From "Huang Cha" to "HEYTEA", from "Xiao Nai Zhi" to "Xiao Bai Zhi", from the removal of "Fo Xi" products to the closure of the DIY naming function, HEYTEA seems to have an inextricable fate with "name changes". Every name change is accompanied by a certain degree of "public relations crisis". Behind this, it may be more than just marketing mistakes.
What does HEYTEA want to do by handing over the "naming right" to users?
The answer may lie in the store closure data of 2025. According to the data of Juhai Brand Monitoring, from October 2024 to October 2025, the number of HEYTEA's outlets nationwide dropped from 4,610 to 3,930, with a net decrease of 680 in one year.
According to another statistics from Yilan Business, as of October 2025, the total number of HEYTEA outlets was 3,903, a decrease of 711 compared with the same period of the previous year, with a year-on-year decline of 15.41%. Over the past year or more, HEYTEA has closed nearly 2 outlets on average every day.
In 2025, the key words of HEYTEA are "shrinking" and "returning". The brand voluntarily suspended franchise applications and shifted from scale expansion to focusing on products. In 2026, the new tea drink industry is still accelerating its reshuffle. The number of existing tea drink outlets nationwide has shrunk to 383,100, with more than 110,000 outlets closed in the past year. In 2025, the number of freshly made milk tea outlets in the whole industry decreased by nearly 30,000, and the myth of extensive growth that "opening a store means making a profit" has ended.
Against this background, HEYTEA needs to find a new growth narrative. The DIY function, which hands over both the R&D right and naming right to consumers, is essentially a low-cost content marketing experiment.
It does not need to invest huge advertising fees or invite spokespersons, but only needs to add an entry in the mini-program to let users generate content by themselves. The data that the number of views on related Douyin topics exceeded 100 million, Xiaohongshu notes flooded the platform, and outlets saw order surges, proved that the experiment was successful at least at the "traffic" level.
The problem lies in the "naming right".
HEYTEA obviously underestimated the destructive power of the internet "abstract culture". When the naming right is transferred from the brand side to users, the naming logic switches from "brand tonality" to "traffic code".
What netizens pursue is not elegance or restraint, but eye-catching, funny, resonating, or even controversial content.
The self-deprecating "livestock series" names of office workers are still within the controllable range; names derived from crazy meme culture or film and television memes are harmless; but there are always some people who cross the line and lead the naming to vulgarity and suggestive content.
This is almost the common dilemma of all "user-generated content" models: you cannot preset the boundaries of users, so you cannot control the direction of content. The high-end, new-style tea drink brand tonality of HEYTEA that integrates Zen tea culture is almost irreconcilable with the tension of vulgar names.
When a drink named "large portion of fecal soup" appears on HEYTEA's order page, the brand side can almost only choose to close the entry.
Why does HEYTEA always "accidentally" create suggestive controversies?
From Durex collaboration to "Xiao Nai Zhi", from "Fo Xi" to the DIY naming function, HEYTEA's suggestive controversies show a patterned feature: the brand actively or passively approaches the controversial zone, brakes urgently after public opinion ferments, and then makes adjustments on the grounds of "avoiding misunderstanding". Every time, HEYTEA gets huge traffic and attention; every time, the brand image also takes a hit.
This may be "accidental", or it may be a path dependence under the anxiety of traffic. When a brand is eager to find growth points under the pressure of store shrinkage and industry reshuffle, controversy becomes a low-cost and high-efficiency way to get attention. With the help of vulgar marketing, even if the brand earns enough traffic in a short period of time, it will eventually end up with the result of "success comes from traffic, failure also comes from traffic".
However, from the forced name change from "Huang Cha" to the voluntary transfer of naming right now, HEYTEA has built a high-end tea drink brand image for more than ten years. Every suggestive controversy is consuming the trust assets accumulated by this image. The eager marketing method not only easily causes consumers' resentment and resistance, but also damages the long-term interests of the brand.
HEYTEA's DIY function has been closed. Now users can still make interesting cup stickers to enhance user stickiness and product plasticity, but the problem has not disappeared.
In a tea drink market with stock competition and accelerated reshuffle, how brands find a balance between "attracting attention" and "maintaining brand tonality" is not only a topic for HEYTEA, but also a test that the entire new tea drink industry is facing.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Super Focus foci", written by Fang Wensan, and authorized for release by 36Kr.