The story of Ba Wang Cha Ji is China's answer to *The Pursuit of Happyness*.

By Jiaxiang Shi

Edited by Jing Liu

This should have been a moment to share good news. On May 21, Zhang Junjie, who had kept a low profile for some time, appeared at a Ba Wang Cha Ji press conference. Sharing business data for the first time in two years, he brought numbers that electrified the market: in 2023, Ba Wang Cha Ji reached 10.8 billion RMB in total GMV, and in Q1 2024 alone, it hit 5.8 billion RMB. Internally, the company projects 2024 revenue to exceed 20 billion RMB — doubling year over year. Zhang even declared on stage that this year's sales would surpass Starbucks.

Consider this: at the end of 2022, Ba Wang Cha Ji had barely over 1,000 stores. Less than 18 months later, that number has surpassed 4,500.

But Zhang choked up. Yes — in front of a live audience of over a thousand and five million online viewers, he choked up.

He also spoke, with the air of someone remembering hardship amid plenty, about his grassroots origins: no formal education, no family background. Now, he said, he has "no elders above, no children below, no relatives to the left, no friends to the right." "After my whole family passed away, I started thinking about why I'm alive." He once shared in private that his current name was one he chose for himself, derived from the saying "those who understand the times are the true heroes."

In some ways, Zhang reminds us of Pop Mart founder Wang Ning's story: similarly grassroots, similarly living on the margins, similarly pulling off an unlikely comeback against the odds.

In 2010, at age 17, Zhang Junjie joined a chain called "Dawei Milk Tea" as a shop assistant. To memorize the ingredient lists, he worked from the morning shift at 9 a.m. until the night shift ended. His performance was strong enough to rise from assistant to store manager to regional supervisor, eventually becoming the operations lead for Yunnan.

Three years later, a franchisee looking to exit because of poor performance wanted to transfer his shop. Zhang didn't have enough money to buy it, so he offered to pay 10,000 RMB above the asking price — on the condition that he'd pay a year later.

The shop's problem was its remote location. Zhang opened two channels to fix this. One was delivery. There were no delivery platforms yet, but customers could call in orders, so he went to surrounding businesses, residential buildings, and office towers handing out delivery flyers with his shop at the center.

The other channel was setting up a sales point near the cafeteria of an elementary school a kilometer away. At first, the cafeteria owner kept refusing. After repeated unsuccessful negotiations, Zhang simply made 50 cups of milk tea and brought them to the school, promising the owner that if they didn't sell out, he wouldn't come back the next day. After lunch, all 50 cups were gone. The owner told him to bring 100 cups the next day.

Under Zhang's management, the shop went from near-bankruptcy to daily revenue of eight or nine thousand RMB. This was his first real money from franchising. He also tried to launch his own tea brand, getting to the point of assembling a team to leave, but ultimately dropped it because of his relationship with Dawei Milk Tea.

Later, he joined a robotics company in Shanghai. There, watching Hey Tea and Lelecha expand, he realized that if he didn't act now, he'd miss the best window.

He called up a friend with a tea background whom he'd met at a Shanghai food and beverage expo. From over fifty names, they chose the one with the highest votes and the catchiest ring: Ba Wang Cha Ji. Several people pooled over a million RMB, rented a 40-square-meter attic in Kunming for 2,500 RMB a month (they later bought the attic as a memento), visited over fifty well-known tea chains across China, and proposed to "gather the best of a hundred schools" to form the first iteration of Ba Wang Cha Ji.

XVC founder Boyu Hu once revealed that during his first conversation with Zhang, Zhang told him he'd never been to school. Hu's first reaction was that he hadn't been to university — then he realized it meant "had received no basic education whatsoever." Between ages 10 and 17, Zhang had been living on the streets, so he couldn't read or write before turning 18. He only taught himself pinyin while apprenticing at a milk tea shop, because he couldn't remember the drink names. Later, when writing on the whiteboard for XVC, he still had to write some characters in pinyin.

A person close to Zhang told Anyong Waves that for a time, Zhang hadn't heard of most concepts in the food and beverage industry, but once explained, he immediately understood. Sometimes someone would use an idiom in conversation, and Zhang would ask what it meant; the next time, he'd use it himself — "though sometimes incorrectly."

Hu had initially wondered how Zhang acquired information at all. But after talking with him through the night, he found Zhang's understanding of business models, his insights into management, were better than most CEOs he knew. "With most founders, they have to think things through on the spot. But Zhang could immediately give considered answers — including how to solve short-term and mid-term competition, even mentioning which executives he planned to bring in to replace the current team." He had already mapped out the company's future. Even at the earliest stage, he had attracted several core Hey Tea executives to join. Hu ultimately concluded that Zhang "can win battles, and can keep winning battles."

The lesson of Ba Wang Cha Ji for XVC was: how many years someone spent in school has little bearing on whether they can make correct decisions and build high-performance organizations.

A consumer investor who has met founders of multiple fresh-made tea brands considers Zhang the most ambitious among them — "more focused on making this thing big."

A tea brand CEO told Anyong Waves that many people from the bottom, going from annual income of twenty or thirty thousand to several million, tend toward conservatism. But after making Ba Wang Cha Ji the top brand in Yunnan, Zhang pushed to keep expanding during the pandemic against internal opposition, before the foundation was even solid. If one had to summarize the reasons for his success, "having the guts to fail and start over from scratch" would absolutely be on the list.

From working at a milk tea shop in 2010 to founding Ba Wang Cha Ji in 2017 — just seven years. Without a single day of formal schooling, Zhang went from milk tea apprentice to owning his own tea brand. Another seven years, and Ba Wang Cha Ji grew from one small shop on Kunming's Wuyi Road to 4,500 stores across China and overseas. It's no exaggeration to say his story is almost a Chinese version of The Pursuit of Happyness.

Turn the clock back to 2017: Zhang walked into investor meetings with a pitch deck that "wasn't very well written." Three lines formed its core: "Become a brand known by all young Chinese," "Become the best choice for Chinese physical investors and entrepreneurs," "Become Ba Wang Cha Ji in 100 countries." One aside: during this period, he took these three lines to a design company and asked if they could cut him a deal for this great ideal — he even offered 5% equity in exchange for 150,000 RMB in design fees. They laughed at him: if you can't even afford 150,000 RMB, what are you doing talking about 100 countries?

More than one investor close to Ba Wang Cha Ji told Anyong Waves that the company may go public in the U.S. this year. Separately, a Ba Wang Cha Ji employee revealed that Zhang also mentioned the possibility of an IPO at this year's annual meeting.

This Yunnan native started from a lower point than most, yet has compressed what is still only a seven-year entrepreneurial journey. Meanwhile, born in 1993, he has just turned 31.

Everything seems to be just beginning.

Image source | Unsplash

References:

[1] The Truth About Selling, by Xiaomasong