Bubble tea chain Gong cha wants to expand to 500 UK stores by the end of the decade.
While this seems a lofty ambition for a chain that has just 13 UK outposts at present, and has taken seven years to get that far, chief executive Paul Reynish is confident. It is “an amazing global brand that nobody’s ever heard of” in the UK, he said, with 2,000 stores globally that he wants to be 10,000 by 2030.
He drew a parallel with Subway, where he worked 20 years ago when it had just 10 UK stores. “We said we’d have 2,000 one day and nobody believed us, yet here it is today with more than 2,000 in the UK.”
