The story of CHAGEE is China's version of *The Pursuit of Happyness*.

Text | Shi Jiaxiang

Editor | Liu Jing

Originally, this was a moment to share good news.

On May 21st, Zhang Junjie, who had been out of the public eye for a long time, appeared at the press conference of Ba Wang Cha Ji. Sharing business data for the first time in two years, the figures he presented invigorated the market: In 2023, the total sales GMV of Ba Wang Cha Ji reached 10.8 billion yuan, and in the first quarter of 2024, the sales GMV reached 5.8 billion yuan. Internally, it is estimated that the revenue in 2024 will exceed 20 billion yuan, achieving double - digit growth. Zhang Junjie even boasted on the spot that this year's sales would surpass Starbucks.

It should be noted that at the end of 2022, Ba Wang Cha Ji had just over 1,000 stores. Less than a year and a half later, the number of stores has exceeded 4,500.

But Zhang Junjie choked up. Yes, in front of thousands of on - site audiences and five million online consumers, he choked up.

He also reminisced about his humble beginnings: having no education and no family background. Now, he is "without elders above, without children below, without relatives on the left, and without friends on the right." "After all my family members left, I started to think about why I was alive." He also once shared in a private occasion that his current name was chosen by himself later, originating from the saying "A wise man adapts himself to circumstances."

To some extent, Zhang Junjie reminds us of the story of Wang Ning, the founder of Pop Mart: both from humble beginnings, both once living on the fringes, and both making a comeback against the odds when not being favored.

In 2010, 17 - year - old Zhang Junjie became a clerk in a chain brand called "Da Wei Milk Tea". To memorize the ingredient list, he worked from the morning shift at nine o'clock until the end of the night shift. Due to his excellent performance, he was promoted from a clerk to a store manager, then to a regional supervisor, and was once the operation manager in Yunnan.

Three years later, the owner of a franchise store wanted to transfer the store due to poor management. Zhang Junjie didn't have enough money to take over the milk tea shop, so he proposed to take it over at a price one - ten - thousand - yuan higher than the owner's asking price, on the condition that he would pay after one year.

The reason for the poor business of this milk tea shop was its remote location. Zhang Junjie opened up two channels to solve this problem. One of them was takeout. At that time, there was no takeout platform, but customers could order milk tea by phone. So he took the milk tea shop as the center and distributed takeout flyers to surrounding businesses, residential buildings, and office buildings.

The other channel was to set up a sales point near the primary school canteen one kilometer away from the milk tea shop. At first, the canteen owner always disagreed. After repeated communication with no result, Zhang Junjie simply made 50 cups of milk tea and took them to the school, promising the owner that if they couldn't be sold, he wouldn't come the next day. After lunch, the 50 cups of milk tea were sold out. The canteen owner asked him to bring 100 cups the next day.

Under Zhang Junjie's management, this milk tea shop went from being on the verge of closing down to achieving a daily turnover of eight to nine thousand yuan. This was his first pot of gold earned through franchising. He also tried to create his own tea - drink brand. He had reached the stage of leading a team, but finally, due to his relationship with Da Wei Milk Tea, it didn't work out.

Later, he went to a robot company in Shanghai. Here, he saw the expansion of Heytea and Lelecha and realized that if he didn't act, he would miss the best opportunity.

He called on his friends with tea - drink backgrounds he met at the Shanghai Catering Exhibition. They chose the most popular and catchy name, Ba Wang Cha Ji, from more than fifty names. Several people pooled more than one million yuan, rented a 40 - square - meter attic in Kunming with a monthly rent of 2,500 yuan (they later bought the attic as a souvenir), visited more than 50 well - known tea - drink chain brands across the country, and proposed to "learn from the best of all" to form the first - generation Ba Wang Cha Ji.

Hu Boyu, the founder of XVC, once revealed to the public that when he first communicated with Zhang Junjie, the latter told him that he hadn't gone to school. His first reaction was that Zhang hadn't gone to university, but later he found out that Zhang "had not received any basic education at all" - he was wandering from the age of 10 to 17, so he couldn't read until he was 18. He taught himself pinyin when he was an apprentice in the milk tea shop because he couldn't remember the names of milk teas. Later, when making a presentation for XVC, he still had to write some characters in pinyin.

A person close to Zhang Junjie once told "An Yong Waves" that for a while, Zhang Junjie had never heard of most of the content in the catering industry, but he understood immediately after it was explained to him. Sometimes, when someone said a sentence containing an idiom, Zhang Junjie would ask what the idiom meant and would use it next time, "but sometimes he would use it incorrectly."

Hu Boyu originally wondered how Zhang Junjie obtained information. But after chatting with him all night, he found that Zhang's understanding of business models and insight into management were even better than most CEOs he knew. "When chatting with ordinary founders, many things need to be thought about on the spot, but Zhang Junjie could immediately give well - thought - out answers, including how to solve short - term, medium - and long - term competition, and even mentioned which senior executives to recruit to replace the existing team." - He had already planned the future development of the enterprise. Even at the starting stage, he had attracted several core senior executives from Heytea to join. Finally, Hu Boyu thought that Zhang Junjie "could win battles and continue to win battles."

The case of Ba Wang Cha Ji inspires XVC that the number of years a person spends in school has little to do with his ability to make correct decisions and build a high - performance organization.

A consumer investor who has met the founders of many ready - to - drink tea brands believes that Zhang Junjie is the most ambitious among them, "more concerned about making this business bigger."

The CEO of a tea - drink brand evaluated to "An Yong Waves" that many people from the bottom, when their annual income increases from two or three thousand yuan to several million yuan, tend to become more conservative. But after Zhang Junjie made Ba Wang Cha Ji the number one brand in Yunnan, with the foundation not yet stable, he defied all odds and continued to expand during the pandemic. If we have to summarize the reasons for his success, "always having the courage to start over if it fails" must be one of them.

It only took seven years from Zhang Junjie working in a milk tea shop in 2010 to founding Ba Wang Cha Ji in 2017. A person who had never been to school for a single day went from being a milk tea apprentice to owning his own tea - drink brand, and another seven years later, Ba Wang Cha Ji expanded from a small store on Wuyi Road in Kunming to 4,500 stores across China and overseas. It's no exaggeration to say that his story is almost the Chinese version of "The Pursuit of Happyness".

Back in 2017, Zhang Junjie went to see investors with a "not - so - good" BP. There were three core sentences in it: "Become a brand known to all Chinese young people", "Become the best choice for Chinese physical investors and entrepreneurs", "Become Ba Wang Cha Ji in 100 countries around the world". An episode is that during this period, he took these three sentences to a design company and asked if they could do it cheaper for the sake of a great ideal. He even proposed to exchange 5% of the shares for a 150,000 - yuan design fee. The other party laughed at him, saying that if he couldn't even afford 150,000 yuan, how could he talk about 100 countries?

More than one investor close to Ba Wang Cha Ji has mentioned to "An Yong Waves" that Ba Wang Cha Ji may go public in the US this year. According to an employee of Ba Wang Cha Ji, Zhang Junjie also mentioned the possibility of an IPO at this year's annual meeting.

This Yunnanese, whose starting point in life was lower than most people, has had an ultra - concentrated entrepreneurial journey of only seven years so far. Meanwhile, he, born in 1993, has just turned 31.

Everything seems to be just beginning.

References:

[1] "The Truth of Selling Goods" by Xiao Masong