Former CFO of McDonald's China Joins Baiwang Tea Co. Company to Accelerate IPO Process
1min read According to media reports, former CFO of McDonald's China, Wong Hong Fei, will join Hongcha, a tea shop in the Chinese mainland, and analysts believe that this means the Hongcha's IPO process is expected to accelerate. Wong Hong Fei left McDonald's China on October 14 this year and will join Hongcha after a brief rest.
The report also said that Hongcha founder Zhang Junjie is currently upgrading the "high-level team", aiming to upgrade Hongcha's future store operation model, supply chain, digital system and other aspects.
As early as April this year, media reports said that Hongcha was preparing to go public in the United States, which may have major progress in the second half of the year. This time the fundraising scale is expected to be between US$200 million and US$300 million, and Citigroup and Morgan Stanley will be responsible for the IPO.
According to Wong Hong Fei's personal information, he joined McDonald's (Guangzhou) in 1996 and was promoted to Vice President and General Manager of McDonald's China in 2010, responsible for the business of the whole of China, including the development of new stores, operations and market management.
Hongcha was founded in June 2017. In 2023, Hongcha experienced explosive growth, with more than 2,300 new stores added this year, an average of 6 new stores per day. The 2,300 new stores are three times the total number of its stores in the past five years. After this wave of store opening in 2023, the total number of stores at home and abroad reached 4,092 by May 2024. Hongcha has gone through several rounds of financing, with investors including XVC, Fosun, Fosun RZ Capital, and Zongbei Qiu Shi.
According to Hongcha's website, in addition to several cities in China, it has also opened stores in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, with more than 4,500 stores worldwide, selling more than 100 million cups of tea a year. Its Hong Kong store opened in K11 in September.