This is an English adaptation of a FoodBud historical article originally published on September 5, 2021.
After receiving investment from Chayan Yuese, Guoyaya said it wanted to push toward 100 company-operated stores in Changsha within 2021.
At a summit in April 2021, Chayan Yuese founder and chairman Lu Liang said publicly that he had grown tired of drinking his own brand and usually drank Guoyaya more often. The two Changsha-based tea brands were also close offline, with employees often exchanging drinks during team activities.
On July 30, 2021, Lu posted on WeChat Moments that Chayan had invested in Guoyaya. Guoyaya founder Wu Wei then reposted Chayan Yuese’s official WeChat article and said she and her team were very happy.
Lu told media that consumers liked Guoyaya’s products, and that he also liked the founder and team. He said Guoyaya was Chayan Yuese’s only brand investment at the time, and the only one it was considering for now, describing the rationale as aligned values and simple personal preference.
Wu Wei, born in the 1990s in Anhui, studied economic management at university. Anhui Agricultural University eventually assigned her to study pig farming, but she chose not to follow that path.
In her senior year, she told her parents she had joined a state-owned breeding company. In reality, she paid RMB 110 to an agency to find temporary work, taking jobs such as selling bottled water in supermarkets, handing out flyers, and selling insurance.
She later stayed at a franchised milk tea shop called Dixiatie (地下铁), working part-time in sales for RMB 6 per hour. After one year, she graduated, but the milk tea shop owner encouraged her to go out and try bigger opportunities rather than stay in the shop. Wu then moved to Beijing.
Two years later, her former boss asked whether she wanted to start a milk tea brand together in Changsha. Wu quit her Beijing job, secretly sold a small apartment in Hefei, borrowed cash from many people, and went alone to Changsha to become a partner in the tea business. She later said that if she failed, she would simply return to selling pork.
The first store opened next to Changjun High School and sold freshly prepared hot red bean tea. It made a modest profit. But after two years, the business still had not broken out. After establishing the Guoyaya brand, Wu even worked at Starbucks for a year in 2014 to learn from the chain.
Her next turning point came when she realized that one small store would not create a breakthrough. She opened a second shop near Walmart on Changsha’s busy Jiefang West Road and leased two adjacent storefronts. Business was poor after opening, and the new store lost money every day. The first store’s profits were what kept the company going.
When rent became difficult to pay on time, Wu decided the brand needed sharper differentiation. In her view, weak product sales meant a positioning problem. Milk tea could not surpass Chayan Yuese, so she chose a different path: fresh fruit tea.
Wu chose fruit tea, a category with higher operating barriers. Each cup used seasonal fruit and was handmade in-store. The change worked: one fruit tea store soon exceeded 2,000 cups in a single day, with queues similar to Chayan Yuese’s.
For Guoyaya, growth brought new operational challenges. Supply chain management and quality control became central issues. Production quality depended on store-level training and management, while digital systems could standardize raw material quality control, procurement, inventory, and delivery.
The article noted that national chains such as Heytea, Nayuki, and Yi Dian Dian were already far ahead of local Changsha tea brands in these areas.
Wu said Changsha’s local foodservice brands were characterized by sincerity, inclusiveness, and close connections. She often learned from Chayan Yuese’s focus on product and service. As local “specialty” brands of Changsha, these internet-famous chains wanted recognition from the local market first.
In Changsha, Chayan Yuese had already created the impression of being everywhere, especially in core commercial areas such as Huangxing Road.
Its store strategy was straightforward: open densely in the city center, occupy consumer mindshare, then expand outward. This concentration in Changsha’s main urban districts helped reduce transport costs, improve supply chain efficiency, and increase brand visibility.
Guoyaya, positioned around “fresh-cut fruit,” appeared to follow Chayan Yuese’s footprint, which was positioned around freshly made milk tea.
According to Jihai brand monitoring data cited in the article, Guoyaya had 48 stores across four cities in Hunan at the time:
All 48 were directly operated, and 80% were located in shopping centers.
Its clustering strategy was also similar to Chayan Yuese’s. In Changsha, 46.34% of Guoyaya stores were within 500 meters of another Guoyaya store.
By following Chayan Yuese into shopping centers and building dense clusters, Guoyaya could quickly build brand momentum and establish a higher-end beverage image.
The article also argued that Chayan Yuese’s limited use of mini-program ordering often led to long lines. Guoyaya could benefit from nearby exposure while also capturing customers unwilling to wait in Chayan Yuese queues.
On pricing, Guoyaya sat above Chayan Yuese. Chayan Yuese was described as operating mainly in the RMB 15-20 band, while Guoyaya was in the RMB 20-30 band, creating a differentiated positioning closer to higher-end competitors such as Heytea and Nayuki.
The article suggested this may have been one reason Chayan Yuese favored Guoyaya: the two brands had different positioning, and fruit tea and milk tea had complementary seasonal peaks and troughs. Investing in Guoyaya could help Chayan Yuese hedge risk and cover another beverage category.
At the time, the combination of mid-positioned Chayan Yuese and higher-end Guoyaya was framed as a way to build Changsha’s beverage identity, deepen coverage in Hunan, continue store densification, improve operations and supply chain efficiency, and create local brand recognition barriers.
Note: investment details and 2021 store-expansion targets are historical figures from the source article.