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0:00I decided to, you know, quit the
corporate life and a lucrative
0:03career in in banking to go all
in on trying to build Gong Cha.
0:08A funny story was that the CEO asked me to see him
and say, "Which bank are you going to?" I went,
0:13"Actually, I'm not going to a bank.
So, what are you doing? I'm off to do
0:17bubble tea." And he thought I was absolutely
insane. Yeah, that's where it all started.
0:22This is Martin Berry, founder and
chairman of Gong cha Global. He's
0:26the brain behind the company's global expansion,
0:28growing it from a regional favorite into
one of the biggest brewers in the business.
0:33What started as a small tea shop in Taiwan in 1996
0:36has now become a bubble tea empire with
over 2,000 locations across 30 countries.
0:42When you're struggling to
want to start a business,
0:44you think you have to invent the next light bulb.
0:47If you're waiting for the right time, it's never
going to come. It never feels comfortable to make
0:52the step from getting a salary every
month to then going and becoming an
0:56entrepreneur. And you need to take the leap
of faith. And you need to just go for it.
1:00There are three numbers to watch
out for in Gong cha's story.
1:041996, the year that Zhen-hua Wu, Gong cha's
original founder, opened his first tea shop.
1:11$2.5 million, the amount spent by Martin
to open his first five stores in Korea,
1:16expanding the business into its fifth market.
1:18And $578 million, the company's
systemwide sales in 2024.
1:24This is Founder Effect.
1:30Martin grew up in the countryside near Melbourne.
Since childhood, he's had the entrepreneurial bug.
1:36We didn't necessarily have a lot of money.
So, probably one of the funny stories was
1:40it was coming Christmas time and we had these uh
trees just that were around the property that we
1:45lived. And so I quickly mocked up a little ad
and went to the local grocery store and stuck
1:51a sign up saying Christmas trees for sale.
And some guy turned up and I think was a bit
1:55shocked at a a 10-year-old boy meeting him at this
location with a saw in his hand. So I think I got
2:02$10 for selling him a Christmas tree that
was publicly owned on the side of the road.
2:06Martin only became more enterprising with
age. When it came time for university,
2:11he didn't have the typical student experience.
2:14At just 19, he stepped into his first full-time
2:16corporate role. And by graduation, he
had developed quite the head start.
2:21A university presentation, which was meant to be
for graduates, and I snuck into the auditorium
2:26and I was listening to all these companies pitch
as to why these graduates should join them. And
2:30so at the end of the presentation, I went up to
the HR director and said, "Hey, listen, you know,
2:35I would love to work with you." Um, she, yep, put
in your graduate application. Said, "Actually,
2:41I'm not a graduate. I'm a first year. Um, but
I'll work for free. And they said, okay, when
2:46you graduate, come back and we'll give you a job.
And I was like, no, why don't you give me a job
2:51now and I'll sort out the university. And I just
managed to make it work by studying night school
2:57and weekends to complete the degree. And so, I
think starting early, you know, that really helped
3:02me a lot that by 21 I had a degree and a couple of
years experience. That got me off to a nice start.
3:07By his late 20s, Martin's banking career had
skyrocketed. He had managed multi-trillion dollar
3:13balance sheets and worked in offices around
the world for companies like Citi, Barclays
3:18and Standard Chartered. And yet despite his early
success, Martin's entrepreneurial itch came back.
3:25Times got a bit difficult for me in in financial
services. I realized after working hard for quite
3:31a long period of time that I didn't really like
the corporate system. Um I didn't like its lack
3:36of entrepreneurialism. I started to then look
around for opportunities to build a business.
3:43Martin experimented with a few business
ideas, but it was in January 2011 here at
3:48Singapore's Vivo City Shopping Center that
he discovered the next chapter of his life.
3:53One day we were living in Singapore and uh I was
going for a haircut. I passed past this store
3:59and there's this huge queue of people and I was
like, "This looks interesting. What is this Gong
4:04cha? Wonder what Gong cha is." So I decided
to join the queue. Tick number one was okay.
4:09This queue is moving quite quickly. So velocity
and turnover tick. Two, I get through the queue
4:16and I was quite surprised to see that actually
the store is quite small. So tick number two
4:20was from a capital expenditure perspective, this
mustn't require a lot of money to actually build
4:25one. And I start seeing what they're making. I
thought okay water plus tea leaves and some ice
4:30from a unit economic standpoint, tick, this
must be quite popular and quite profitable.
4:36So then I eventually get to the front
of the queue. I ask them for what their
4:40bestselling drinks are. See, there's
only two people working in the store
4:44and I was just completely blown away
by the business model. I just thought
4:47from a financial engineering
standpoint, it was incredible.
4:50From there, Martin dove into due
diligence and visited several other
4:54Gong cha stores to sample their
drinks and observe foot traffic.
4:57He brought the idea to his wife who ultimately
became the co-founder of Gong cha Korea. I went
5:03back to my wife and said, "Are you
familiar with this brand?" She said,
5:07"Yeah, I drink it now and again." I was like, "Do
you think this would work in Korea?" She said,
5:11"Actually, you know what? I think it could."
I went and obviously sampled all the other
5:16brands that existed, which largely all came
from Taiwan. So, I had a huge amount of
5:20conviction that Gong cha was the best
tasting and had the best ingredients.
5:25In June 2011, Martin flew out to Taiwan where he
5:28met Gong cha's original founder and
landed the master franchise rights.
5:33At the time, Gong cha was just in four
markets, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong,
5:38and the Philippines. Martin expanded the bubble
tea business into its fifth, South Korea.
5:44By April 2012, Martin and his wife opened
their first Gong cha store in Hongdae,
5:50Korea. And within a few months, they opened
four other locations across Korea using a total
5:56of about $2.5 million in life savings that the
couple had amassed through their banking careers.
6:01It was quite terrifying to be honest. Um,
6:04we opened the first store and if you
build it, they will come does not apply.
6:08So my strategy was I'm going to
put a Gong cha the first five
6:12stores next to Starbucks and if I can
get one in a hundred people that are
6:18going into Starbucks to come and try
a Gong cha then I've got a business.
6:22Thankfully social media was just starting to sort
6:24of kick off then. So people would post
it on Facebook, post it on Instagram.
6:30Come three months into it, we were getting
queues on a weekend that sometimes were
6:34like 250 people deep and it was like
it was just manic. Then ironically,
6:40I was working behind the counter of one of the
stores and I said to my wife, I said, "Why is
6:46there two older guys in suits sitting in the
front of our store? That's not our demographic."
6:52Eventually, they came up and introduced themselves
and they were representing one of the top three
6:56uh department stores in Korea. And next thing
you know, they offered us like 30 locations.
7:02In June 2012, Martin signed a deal with Hyundai,
7:05which allowed him to open Gong cha locations
within their department stores across Korea.
7:10This deal was Martin's first big
break in expanding the business.
7:14It was literally just over 12 months from
launching once we'd got to 50 stores. So,
7:19we decided to open up franchising and that's
when the business just absolutely boomed.
7:24One point we almost became more like
a property real estate company helping
7:29people find great locations and
helping them develop the stores.
7:33So literally from first store to
3 years later we had 300 stores.
7:39As the business scaled investors came knocking.
In 2014 private equity firm UCK Partners acquired
7:47a controlling stake in Gong cha Korea. Then
in 2017 in partnership with UCK Partners,
7:54Martin led a reverse acquisition and acquired
Royal Tea Taiwan, the owner of Gong cha.
8:00So all of a sudden it's starting
to take off in different markets,
8:03which then just fueled the fire for people
from the US and all over the world saying we
8:08want to take Gong cha to our market. So then
yeah, we went through a very rapid period of
8:14expansion in terms of opening up all new
territories, starting to go to the US,
8:20starting to go to Mexico, and that's when we
started to go from being sort of a a regional
8:26Asian brand to starting to truly break out
with the potential to become a global brand.
8:33Today, there are over 2,000 Gong cha
stores across 30 countries globally.
8:37In 2024, the business brought in over
$570 million in systemwide sales.
8:43Helping drive that growth is Paul
Reynish, global CEO of Gong cha Global,
8:48a franchise veteran with almost 30 years of
experience at brands like Subway and Burger King.
8:53Paul first met Martin in an unexpected way.
8:56The irony behind how we actually met each
other was that uh I got back involved in
9:02sort of running the business again
for a for a period of time. Um and
9:06uh I was recruiting the uh the CEO of Asia. Uh
and you happened to be a referee for that person.
9:12Yeah, I remember I know Danny well.
9:14Yeah. So uh so that's how we
first met each other, wasn't it?
9:16I was just fascinated by the business
model. You know, I've done this for
9:1930 years in different brands, but Gong
cha is great. You know, the simplicity,
9:24the quality, the authenticity, and then the
opportunity to get scale globally. I thought,
9:28hey, that is a franchise
concept I know I can sell.
9:30What started as a reference call became
a partnership built on shared ambition.
9:36You know, wouldn't it be nice to
take a brand from from Asia and
9:38truly make it global? And that was
something that excited both of us.
9:42While Martin helped spearhead the
company's expansion, he recognizes that
9:46it was a team effort which turned Gong
cha into the global brand it is today.
9:51I'm just a a player in this journey.
I didn't create it from scratch.
9:56I see myself more of a custodian of the
brand and I want to see this brand go on
10:02to much bigger things and truly sort of
win one for Asia for a change. You know,
10:07this life, this brand changed my life, my
family's life. I have a duty to help it
10:12realize its full potential and we're sort
of just custodians in the journey of that.
10:16In 2019, private equity firm TA Associates
acquired a majority stake in Gong cha Global.
10:23Martin remains involved as co-founder,
chairman, and a shareholder today.
10:28The journey to from corporate to
entrepreneurialism is I think 100%
10:33of people fantasize about it and
very few people actually do it.
10:36So I think there's never been a better time for
10:38people and it's never been easier.
Once you've got a well-baked plan,
10:42it's never going to be perfect. then it's time
to just go for it and don't look back, you know,
10:47and have that fear of failure in your head
because it'll drive you to finding ways and
10:51solutions to make it work. But yeah, if you aspire
to be an entrepreneur, there's no time like now.
10:57Today, Martin is building a
new venture, BeMe Wellness,
11:01a supplement brand, and he runs Launcho
Ventures, an AI venture studio. He also
11:06has a strong passion for racing and does
so professionally alongside his son.
11:11I think fortunately for me, you know, I've
built my life into a position where I'm in
11:16control of a lot of things, but
I don't think that's healthy. So,
11:20I love having something that still scares
me. I love being able to challenge myself.
11:25So, chasing 20 year olds around a circuit
keeps you young, keeps you focused,
11:30makes you work hard. You know, my
son, who's 16, has been racing in F4,
11:35and so it's a passion we share. My dream is
that he and I will race at Le Mans 24hour
11:40together one day if I don't get too old because
there's nothing better than getting in a car,
11:44no phone, no distractions. I just got to focus
and so I find it quite therapeutic as a result.
