In conversation: How tech is powering a global tea brand

In the latest episode of MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Marketing Connected podcast series, “In Conversation,” we sit down with Eugene Lee, vice president and chief marketing officer for APAC at Chagee.

Lee, who spent 15 years at McDonald’s, rising from senior marketing executive to international CMO, described his move to Chagee as “really good and refreshing," and a change of pace for him. Chagee, a Chinese tea brand, already has 7,000 stores in China and is now expanding internationally.

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Lee explained that the brand’s ambition is to be in 100 countries with 50,000 stores employing 300,000 people and serving 15 billion cups of tea across the world, all within the next 10 years. He was drawn to the brand as it gave him freedom to do with the brand as he sees fit, translating it from China to other markets internationally.

Technology is at the core of Chagee’s operations. Every store uses automated tea machines connected to the cloud. Lee described the system: “At many bubble tea shops or coffee shops, everything is made by hand and about 400 cups are made a day. But at Chagee, everything is automated, allowing us to serve 2,000 to 4,000 cups a day."

Once a 'charista' (the tea baristas at Chagee) scans a QR code on a cup, it would dispense all of the ingredients accurately within eight seconds.

The technology also allows the brand to focus on human interactions. “Our 'charistas' are freed from repetitive tasks, so that two of them are able to chat with customers from behind the counter, serve them, and have human interactions," Lee shared.

It’s not about cutting down headcount, but about repurposing the headcount so they can be more human, and interact a lot more with customers.

Reflecting on his career, Lee said his best decision was moving from the local market in Malaysia to a regional role at McDonald’s: “I knew exactly what type of regional person I didn’t want to be. I would have wanted a regional person that was super supportive, that will be able to enable me to do all the crazy ideas I wanted to do, versus being the police and coming in to slap you on the wrist.”

Lee also shared one value he would not compromise as a marketer: “Decisions should be made by the people closest to the customer, it should be made by the market teams. My job is just to steer them in the right direction and to be able to work with them on brand strategy at the high level.

He views his role as one that aligns with the local markets on the brand's strategies moving forward. "Everything else in between, is the market's role," he said.

Catch the full conversation here in this video:

Tune into the rest of this conversation on your favourite podcast platforms, by searching up Marketing Connected. For all the visual people out there, we’ve got your back as well, with our vodcasts on YouTube.

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