In June 2026, a "Chinese noodle shop No. 1" with a market value of nearly 3 billion Hong Kong dollars took a Nanyang mom-and-pop shop to court. A bowl of noodles that cost eight yuan was claimed for seven to eight thousand yuan, and the proprietress burst into tears in front of the camera. This drama of "an elephant stepping on an ant" in the restaurant industry has been fermenting in the public opinion field for less than three days, and it has gone from prosecution to apology. Founder Song Qi issued an open letter in the early morning admitting "major management mistakes", announced the suspension of cooperation with outsourcing law firms, and directly gave away the 35th category "Yu Jian Xiao Noodles" trademark to the other party for free.
Withdrawing the lawsuit, apologizing, and giving away a trademark, a crisis public relations combination was executed smoothly. The speed of the apology is also related to the efforts of consumers. Many consumers who had recharged their cards when meeting Xiaomian told Ifeng Technology that after discovering this news incident, they began to contact customer service to cancel their cards.
"Currently, the queue for refunds usually lasts for more than ten minutes, and I probably won't make any purchases. I didn't expect that this company would be able to get back the coupons it had given before when refunding," said a consumer who was in the process of making a refund. Travel blogger Bei Shi told ifeng.com that he travels all year round and always buys met noodles at the airport. However, as a heavy consumer, he feels that met noodles have obvious contradictions. “The dishes are highly dependent on standardized prefabrication processes, lack pot flavor, and are unbalanced in terms of price and performance. Even though the taste is obviously compromised, the prices are still high.”
This incident also made him feel that meeting Xiaomian’s hegemonic rights defense “not only insults the public’s common sense judgment, but also hurts thousands of ordinary people who struggle.”
An employee who met Xiaomian also told Ifeng.com, "It was very busy before, but after the incident, the customer flow in the store dropped a lot. Maybe those stores in large shopping malls are better and will not be affected."
Perhaps what the outside world is more concerned about is: Why is a Hong Kong-listed company with an annual revenue of 1.6 billion so nervous about a mom-and-pop shop that costs eight yuan for a bowl of noodles? What happened behind the scenes?
A tsunami of public opinion caused by an outsourcing law firm's out-of-control situation
On June 3, in Nanyang, Henan, Ms. Mao, the proprietress of "Yu Jian Xiao Noodles", received a court summons. The plaintiff is a Hong Kong-listed company called Meet Xiaomian. The cause of the case is trademark infringement and the claim is 7,000 to 8,000 yuan.
Ms. Mao is from Chongqing and married to Nanyang. She has opened a shop for nearly two years. The "Yu" in the name of the shop is the abbreviation of Chongqing. She wants to tell everyone that what she sells is authentic Chongqing noodles. "For a bowl of noodles that costs eight yuan, you have to sell at least 1,000 bowls, and 1,000 bowls also have costs," she said, wiping tears in front of the camera. "I have never heard of Meet Xiao Noodles."
At this point, it is just an ordinary trademark dispute. What really made this news a hot topic is the "asymmetry" behind it: on one side is a listed company with 503 stores and a market value of HK$3 billion, and on the other side is a 40-square-meter mom-and-pop shop selling hundreds of dollars a day. Two "X met Xiaomian" people met in Nanyang, a city where there was no Xiaomian store at all.
When the lawyer communicated with her the conditions for withdrawing the lawsuit, he said that she needed to compensate seven to eight thousand yuan. Ms. Mao collapsed on the spot. Her puzzlement was simple - the store had been open for almost two years, why was it suddenly sued?
Public opinion quickly exploded. "Meet is a commonly used word and can it protect rights?" "Will we no longer be able to use met milk tea in the future?" Netizens were overwhelmingly questioning.
What’s even more interesting is that as the popularity rises, more and more people are discovering that Meet Xiaomian is not just targeting one store this time.
Upstream News investigation found that there are "Yu Jian Xiaomian" defendants in Changzhou, Jiangsu, Dongguan, Guangdong and other places. Mr. Li, the owner of a mom-and-pop shop in Changzhou, was born in Chongqing in the 1970s. His daily turnover was only a few hundred yuan. He was sued for a compensation of 50,000 yuan. The case is scheduled to be heard on August 27. Mr. Chen from Dongguan was even more "unjust" - his noodle shop closed down and was canceled in January 2026. In May, he suddenly received a court summons demanding a compensation of 50,000 yuan.
The latest news a week ago showed that the lawyer’s fees were disclosed by the met Xiaomian. Among them, the fee for a single case of intellectual property rights protection business once reached 30,000 to 50,000 yuan.
Nanyang is not the only noodle shop that has been sued. From Changzhou to Dongguan, a noodle shop brand launched a series of lawsuits against small and micro businesses called "Yu Jian Xiao Noodles", and some stores have been canceled for several months and are still being pursued.
On June 13, Yumei Xiaomian issued a statement, saying that it had communicated to withdraw the lawsuit. "Yuyu Xiaomian has also grown from a small store to today. We know that starting a business is not easy."
In the early morning of June 15, founder Song Qi released a "Letter to Yujian Xiaomian" - "In the past two days, I have closed my door and thought about my mistakes," he wrote. The company has suspended cooperation with outsourcing law firms and donated the Class 35 "Yujian Xiaomian" trademark to the other party free of charge.
What’s dramatic about this matter is that the entire process from filing the lawsuit to withdrawing the lawsuit and apologizing took less than two weeks. But this cut will not only hurt a small store, but also the brand reputation that a listed company took ten years to build.
Some analysts in the catering industry said that legally the glyphs, pronunciations, and meanings of "渝" and "渝" are different, and it is difficult to even form an "approximation". Lin Yue, chief consultant of Lingyan Management Consulting, commented in an interview with the media, "For Meet Xiaomian, this rights protection seems too rigid, but it is worthy of recognition for standing up and clarifying and apologizing at the right time. This also teaches other companies a lesson. In the process of rapid corporate development, how to correctly identify risks and reasonably defend rights is also an important environment for brand reputation."
Funding anxiety during the expansion period
When looking at the financial report data of this company, it is not surprising that it would be so concerned about trademarks.
In essence, Meet Xiaomian is a restaurant company that mainly operates directly operated stores. The 2025 annual report shows that dine-in revenue of directly operated restaurants is 1.073 billion yuan and takeaway revenue is 377 million yuan. The two together account for 89.39% of the total annual revenue of 1.622 billion yuan. The total franchise income is only 171 million yuan, accounting for less than 11%.
In the past few years, there have been voices telling the story of catering brands adopting an asset-light franchise model. In the script of "Meet Xiaomian", the story is exactly the opposite.
The financial report shows that as of the end of 2025, its number of stores worldwide will be 503, including 411 directly operated stores. There are 356 directly-operated restaurants in first-tier and new first-tier cities, accounting for 78.7% of the total number of stores. The profits of direct-operated stores are as thin as paper. In 2024, one order will only earn 1.4 yuan, and the average net profit per store will drop from 182,000 yuan in 2023 to 169,000 yuan. The annual revenue of a single franchise store is 1.549 million yuan, less than half of the 3.588 million yuan of directly operated stores.
The real dilemma of this company is that it is expanding too fast and its capital chain is too tight.
The financial report shows that the asset-liability ratio of Meet Xiaomian at the end of 2024 is as high as 89.86%, with current assets of only 248 million yuan, but current liabilities as high as 490 million yuan, and a current ratio of 0.51, which is far lower than the safe value of 1. After the IPO in 2025, the asset-liability ratio has improved to 60.55%, and the current ratio is 1.56. But looking back before the IPO in early 2025, there was only 27.91 million yuan in cash on its account. However, it opened 120 new stores in 2024 and 156 more in 2025.
The company is almost relying on cash flow to survive.
Data shows that the net cash flow from operating activities for the whole year of 2025 will further increase from 314 million yuan in 2024 to approximately 400 million yuan. But the money is just enough to cover the rapid expansion of expenses. The financial report also shows that its employee costs increased from 109 million yuan to 265 million yuan from 2022 to 2024. In order to control costs, the company hires a large number of outsourced employees. In 2024, the number of outsourced employees will reach 3,678, while the number of regular employees will drop to 1,443.
An outsourcing employee told ifeng.com that the hourly wage of outsourced employees at Meet Xiaomian is 17.5 yuan, but it is very hard because "Meet Xiaomian requires a full-time job, which means they have to do everything, including washing dishes." Even so, the store's working hours are very strict. "Working hours are balanced based on turnover, and there are also inspections and video inspections."
So what does this mean?
In a time window of tight funds and rapid expansion, brand is the company's core asset. The trademark "Meet Xiaomian" is approximately equal to valuation, financing ability, and confidence of future franchisees in the capital market. If there's any sign of diluting that asset, even if it's just a small mom-and-pop store, it's going to be in trouble.
But there is a fatal flaw in this logic - outsourcing law firms are too eager to get things done. A subpoena is handed to a cash-strapped mom-and-pop shop, and a company with a market value of nearly 3 billion sues a self-employed person. No matter how tenable it is legally, it is a dead end in terms of communication.
It’s easy for an outsourced law firm to stop bleeding, but how long does it take for a brand’s wound to heal?
There is a saying in management called "pregnant with risk", which is perfect for today's meeting Xiaomian.
The more a company is in a period of rapid expansion, the more likely it is that a certain procedural "excessive force" will trigger huge external risks. That rights protection action was carried out by a law firm and probably not reviewed by the management. In the end, the founder had to send an apology letter early in the morning and personally give away the stolen trademark for free.
There are two key time points in crisis public relations: communicating and withdrawing the lawsuit on June 12 is to stop losses; sending an apology letter, sending trademarks, and suspending outsourcing cooperation in the early morning of June 15 is to admit mistakes. The time difference between the two actions was controlled within three days, indicating that the management's response speed was satisfactory.
But it’s too late—the window for the fastest fermentation of public opinion has passed.
The longer-term impact is that this incident may have a "dimensionality-reducing blow" on the consumer psychology of the entire Chinese noodle restaurant circuit. The cry of the proprietress of "Yu Jian Xiao Noodles" that "a bowl of noodles costs eight yuan, you have to sell at least 1,000 bowls" has become a widely circulated communication symbol. It reminds all self-employed people with small businesses: Don’t “encounter” the trademark lines of big brands, even if you make the word “渝” bigger.
For investment institutions, this story also has another layer of warning. Reliance on direct sales, three consecutive declines in customer unit prices, narrowing single store net profits, and loose franchise network—these financial indicators come first, and the brand risk management loopholes exposed by the "Yu Jian Xiaomian" incident come later. Whether a consumer brand with a valuation of nearly HK$3 billion can continue to tell a new story of being the “number one noodle shop” in the sinking market is no longer determined by traffic and store opening speed.
The financial fundamentals are in the books, but the brand fundamentals are in the hearts of consumers.
A listed company with a revenue of 1.6 billion took multiple "Yujian Xiaomian" mom-and-pop shops to court in order to protect its trademark red line. A small Chongqing noodle shop in Changzhou that sold only a few hundred yuan a day was sued for 50,000 yuan in compensation; a small owner in Dongguan whose shop had been closed for several months received a summons in May in his hometown of Fengdu.
This is no longer called defending rights.
This is called using the logic of capital to harvest nostalgia and using legal means to kill fireworks. Before placing the knife on your neck, you must first think about who will be injured after cutting.