Bubble tea concept Gong Cha is hard at work readying itself for aggressive expansion in the Americas.
Bubble tea concept Gong Cha is gearing up to expand in the United States, with the hiring of a new team to focus on their growth goals.
Among those hired was Geoff Henry, president of the Americas, who will be heading the team.
“I think we’ve got tremendous growth potential for this brand,” said Henry. “Gong Cha is a strong global player in the world of bubble tea, and we’re super excited about the potential for growth in the Americas.”
Henry’s most recent role was with Jamba, and he’s worked in the drink industry for more than 20 years. When Jamba became a private company under Focus Brands, he was already looking for his next steps when a recruiter reached out to him.
While Gong Cha has a global presence of 1,900 stores, only a tenth of those are in the U.S. Still, those locations have been successful for the brand, and with the popularity of bubble tea on the rise in the American market, Gong Cha has an aggressive growth strategy in place.
Gong Cha is known for their tasty tea, made fresh every four hours.
The first step was to put together a new team with the sole focus on expanding in North and South America. The other new hires include Kiki Jin, global chief marketing officer; Pip McKenzie, general counsel; Missy Maio, director of brand and consumer marketing; Rebecca Kahn and Marisol Gil, each franchise business leaders; and Russ Kratzer, senior director of supply chain.
The next step will be using the brand’s reputation to their advantage.
“We already have great brand recognition. We’ve been building brand awareness certainly on the coasts,” said Henry. “We’re now making inroad towards the middle of the U.S. and other parts of the Americas.”
So far, they’ve formed multi-unit partnerships in Colorado and Michigan. The team will continue to focus on selling master franchise agreements to experienced franchisees. The plan is to ensure that everyone from the sub-franchisees to the master franchisees are successful utilizing their experience with other popular brands.
“We have a fantastic product,” said Henry. “I’ve worked in drinks for the better part of 20 years and I did a lot of taste testing before coming on board and certainly fell in love with the product.”
With 1900 locations across 22 countries, Gong Cha plans on making their marketing efforts more unified with the U.S. expansion team.
In Henry’s case, because he’s also worked at drink giants Coca-Cola and Dasani, he’s bringing knowledge of market trends for the master franchisees to utilize. The team is also bringing in their experience in order to develop a set-up of best practices and trainings for global use.
All of this was done to take advantage of the United States’ growth potential, which made it a priority target for Gong Cha.
Even though it’s the big target, marketing will be taking on a unified approach globally, Henry said. This will include limited-time flavors, promotions and more in order to raise brand awareness. With many stores in the pipeline set up, Henry is confident Gong Cha will reach the goal of 500 U.S. stores by the end of 2024.
“Because people know the brand, and not just from the state that they live but maybe from other countries, they drive a long way to get some bubble tea,” said Henry. “To go to a Gong Cha that’s suddenly with driving distance is fun for them to hear.”