In December 2013, Chayan Yuese opened its first store at Simenkou in Changsha, less than thirty square metres. That store had one insistence: every cup of tea is brewed fresh on the spot, with no pre-made tea base. That insistence sits a little awkwardly with what we do — industrial aroma materials pursue "the same after six months"; freshly brewed tea wants "best at the moment it is made". One seeks steadiness, the other freshness; they look like two roads. But over these two years of working together we have found that both sides are actually solving the same problem: how to make a cup of tea's aroma complete during the minute or two in which it is drunk. Industrial material seeks steadiness because the road from factory to shelf is long; fresh brewing seeks freshness because the road from the counter to the customer's hand is short. The roads differ in length, so what is needed differs, but "complete aroma" is the same.

Chayan does "Chinese tea made the Western way", applying the thinking of Italian coffee to tea: the cream series, the foam series, the light cheese foam series, the lemon series, the creative whole-leaf series, the trickling hills series — one cup with layers. By 2024 Chayan had over six hundred directly operated stores in eighteen cities, more than eight thousand partners, and revenue of around three billion yuan; by 2025 it was approaching a thousand stores. Along the way it has not taken shortcuts — every store is directly operated, there has never been franchising or agency, and it has not created new brands with others. That slowness is unusual in the tea drink category: others open a thousand stores a year, Chayan opens two hundred — but the stores it opens survive. What we supply to Chayan is the natural aroma materials for the freshly brewed tea, lemon tea and coffee lines.

The consensus between the two companies is that both believe in "warmth". Chayan's mission is written as "practising what we preach, making a cup of tea with warmth" — warmth here does not mean hot; it means that something between the person making it and the person drinking it: partners remembering a regular's taste, handwritten notes in the store, a cup of hot water given in winter. Thirty years in this trade, we believe that too: the same equipment in different hands produces different results; machines can supply the effort but not the judgement. Whether a batch has reached the right point is judged by the veteran master in the workshop with a nose built up over thirty years. That kind of thing cannot be written into a standard document; it can only be passed from person to person. When Chayan's people come to our plant to work on an aroma they stay two or three days, eating lunch with the workers in the canteen — they understand this.

The cooperation began with one tea. There was nothing wrong with the client's product, but the aroma was not three-dimensional — it drank smoothly and left nothing to remember. The first thing we did on taking it on was not to add aroma but to work out how many layers this cup should have. The real hurdle came after: the material was made and evaluated well in the laboratory, but it drifted once it reached the stores. The reason was plain — staff in the stores do not add by the gram, they add by the spoon or the pump; whether it goes in hot or after cooling, whether tea goes in first or milk first, differs from store to store. Industrial material is designed for "add X grams", and stores cannot do that. Later we changed our thinking: make the specification "high in tolerance" — a little more does not overwhelm, a little less does not thin out, and the order of addition matters as little as possible. Once that version was made, the partners in the stores did not have to change their habits, and the output held steady.

Talking about technology is clearest by three points in time, from a cup being made to being drunk. The first point is the moment it is made — tea liquor brewed open, aroma hitting the nose — which rests on Living-Fragrance physical extraction, moving the plant's original aroma structure across intact by physical means, so the top note can come out. The second point is the few minutes from handing it to the customer to finishing it — the aroma has to release steadily through those minutes rather than being gone in thirty seconds; that rests on supercritical fluid extraction holding the easily scattered components, combined with controlled release governing the release rhythm; iced drinks also have to solve the problem of aroma not coming out at low temperature, which rests on concentration plus fractionation, taking the components that still volatilise when cold. The third point is after it is drunk — the returning sweetness and the lingering aroma in the mouth — which rests on molecular distillation cutting the components by boiling range and keeping the segment needed. Link those three points in time and a cup of tea stands up.

On supply, as Chayan grew from a few dozen stores to nearly a thousand, stocking followed the store count and we planned ahead rather than waiting for a shortage to replenish; when a seasonal launch comes the volume is small and the time tight, so we do small-batch fast response, with a new product going from sampling to supply counted in weeks. On service we go one step further: how the material performs under fresh-preparation conditions — hot, iced, with milk, with sugar — is turned into operating advice for the stores, written in plain language rather than parameters; before a launch, we go into stores together for real testing, standing behind the counter watching how the partners work, which is worth more than ten evaluations in the laboratory. When the client's R&D people come to the plant to work on an aroma, comments are noted on the spot and changes made on return.

For the years ahead, what the two sides need to do together is clear: make the aroma of the fresh-brew line more three-dimensional, fill in the lemon tea and coffee areas, and widen the tolerance for store operation a little further. Things with warmth require patience in whoever makes them — Chayan has opened fewer than a thousand stores in ten years, and we have spent thirty years doing one thing; both sides came up this way.

This article was published on 2026-09-14, and last updated on 2026-09-21. The article will be continuously updated.