CHAGEE Supercharges Tea Culture with $6 Billion Scale

C-Suite Notes: CHAGEE’s $6 billion valuation and 6,000-store network show how China’s new generation of F&B brands fuse cultural storytelling, design discipline, and operational precision to turn tea into a modern lifestyle industry. CHAGEE’s overseas expansion reflects an emerging shift in Chinese consumer branding: exporting aesthetics rather than manufacturing. 

CHAGEE opened its first U.S. flagship store in Westfield Century City with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, May 9, 2025 | image: CHAGEE

When CHAGEE (霸王茶姬) opened its first U.S. flagship in Los Angeles this year—its marble-white counters and minimalist calligraphic signage a world apart from bubble-tea clichés—it marked a turning point. The Chinese milk-tea powerhouse had already conquered its home market with over 6,400 stores and $2.4 billion in annual revenue. In April this year, it hit $6.2 billion valuation on Nasdaq debut. Now, with new stores planned across Southeast Asia and a Korea joint venture in negotiation, CHAGEE’s expansion is not just geographic—it’s cultural.

CHAGEE's Journey From Kunming Tea Startup to National Phenomenon

Founded in 2017 by Zhang Junjie, then 24, in Kunming, Yunnan province, CHAGEE built one of China’s fastest-growing retail systems. In just eight years, the brand scaled from a single storefront to a network rivaling McDonald’s China footprint. Its parent, Cha Ji Holdings, listed on Nasdaq in April 2025 at a valuation of roughly $6.2 billion, confirming investor confidence that China’s next consumer giants may rise not from tech or luxury but from design-driven everyday culture.

In 2024, CHAGEE reported CNY 12.4 billion ($2.4 billion) in revenue and CNY 2.5 billion in net profit—an operating margin close to 20%. It sold over 230 million cups of its signature jasmine green milk tea, produced through semi-automated systems that pour a cup in just eight seconds. Such industrial precision allows the brand to maintain quality even while adding 1,000 to 1,500 new stores a year.

The Power of Simplification

CHAGEE’s formula rejects the category’s chaos of flavors. Its menu centers on “tea + milk” using real leaves from Yunnan and minimal artificial additives. The stripped-down lineup simplifies operations and accelerates service, but it also signals confidence: the product doesn’t need novelty to earn loyalty.

That discipline extends to its retail design. Each flagship—whether in Shanghai or Kuala Lumpur—follows a quiet, architectural aesthetic built around the performance of tea-making. Customers watch staff measure, whisk, and pour behind glowing counters framed in pale stone, transforming fast beverage service into a cultural ritual.

Guochao ("National chic") Leverages Cultural Heritage into Modern Design and Brand Voice

The brand name, drawn from the Peking-opera classic Farewell My Concubine (霸王别姬), gives CHAGEE an immediate cultural anchor. Its logo and packaging borrow from opera motifs and calligraphy, turning heritage into identity. This aesthetic—what Chinese consumers call guochao (国潮; 'national tide'), or  “national chic,” if you will—connects a modern expression of Chinese pride with a new mass market behavior. The message is clear: tea can be fashionable, functional, and deeply local all at once.

That philosophy extends beyond design into storytelling. In May 2025, CHAGEE renamed its global bestseller, the jasmine green milk tea, as BO·YA—a move that reframes the drink from a product to an encounter with a Chinese folklore. The new name draws from the ancient Chinese legend of Bo Ya and Ziqi—a musician and a woodcutter whose mutual understanding inspired the phrase zhī yīn (知音), meaning “one who truly hears and understands you.” By evoking that story, CHAGEE repositions its best-selling tea as a metaphor for human connection.“BO·YA holds special significance to us. It reflects what CHAGEE stands for,” said Eugene Lee, Chief Marketing Officer, CHAGEE APAC, in a recent interview. “That spirit of quiet, meaningful connection is what we hope every cup of BO·YA brings,” Lee explained. The storytelling adds an emotional layer to the tea product (which remains unchanged)—inviting consumers to slow down, savour, and reconnect.

In both design and tone of voice, CHAGEE avoids Western café tropes of caffeine rush or urban hipster hustle. Instead, it sells cultural continuity and refinement. Through projects like BO·YA, it is proving that guochao can evolve from visual style into brand voice—a fusion of heritage, feeling, and modern marketing discipline that has become as central to its success as its logistics engine.

The Engine Behind the Brand

Behind the brand theater lies hard infrastructure. Inventory turnover averages just five days, and logistics costs stay below 1% of gross merchandise value—remarkably efficient for a beverage network of its size. The company’s “flagship-then-franchise” model allows each market to open with a direct-operated flagship that establishes brand experience before expansion. It’s a retail model as much as a marketing one: build the myth first, then multiply it.

From Domestic Strength to Global Symbol

CHAGEE’s overseas expansion, beginning with Southeast Asia and Los Angeles, reflects an emerging shift in Chinese consumer branding: exporting aesthetics rather than manufacturing. Where Western brands once localized to enter China, CHAGEE globalizes by staying authentically itself—inviting the world into a modern Chinese experience.

If Starbucks globalized the coffeehouse, CHAGEE is doing the same for tea, only with different values—slower, quieter, and deeply rooted. Its rise illustrates how cultural storytelling, when paired with disciplined execution, can scale not as ornament but as operating system.