Coffee story A veteran's coffee dream

For Wu Zhibiao, who has worked hard in Shenzhen for more than a decade, the Sri Lankan Pavilion Day of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo is definitely a day worth remembering. On the same day, Sri Lankan Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne, who made a special trip to the Shanghai World Expo Park to attend the National Pavilion Day, took time out of the tight schedule to meet a special guest-Wu Zhibiao from Shenzhen. The middle-aged man with an honest smile was received as a major purchaser of coffee and tea in Sri Lanka. Recalling his dream of coffee for more than a decade, Wu Zhibiao sighed, "it's like a cup of coffee."

Self-made veterans knot coffee

Wu Zhibiao, a native of Qingzhou, Guangxi, was born in Hainan in 1966. Since childhood, Wu Zhibiao's family has been very poor. After graduating from high school, he worked as a soldier in the border defense of Guangxi for two years. After leaving the army in 1985, he returned to Hainan to work as a market administrator in the farmers' market. Due to his low salary, Wu Zhibiao decided to resign and go to sea in order to earn more and be able to support his family.

In the first few years, Wu Zhibiao poured out grain and oil and invested in plastics factories. Although he made a lot of money, he soon lost all his money. After the failure of his business, he came to Zhuhai to help people drive, where he planted the seeds of his story with coffee and black tea.

While driving in Zhuhai, Wu Zhibiao met a Malaysian businessman. The businessman told Wu Zhibiao, "there will be a huge market for coffee in China in the future." More than a decade ago, Malaysia, like today's China, had almost no coffee shops, but now it is all over the streets of Malaysia. Wu Zhibiao remembered these words. After market research, he was excited to find that there is indeed a great market demand for coffee in China.

In 1999, Wu Zhibiao took out 8000 yuan earned by driving to sell coffee from Guangzhou to bars and restaurants in Zhangmu. He said: "at that time, it was very hard. I went to Guangzhou two or three times a week, and I used hand trailers to buy goods. Then, a tea restaurant, Western restaurant promotion. " In the meantime, in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the coffee and Hot Tea, HK Style industry, he came to Hong Kong alone and spent 800 yuan a day to learn from Hong Kong masters. Learn to let Wu Zhibiao know that really high-quality milk tea is made from Sri Lankan black tea. At that time in Hong Kong, Sri Lankan black tea has a history of more than 100 years of consumption.

Opportunities are always left to those who are prepared. In 2000, an international black tea and coffee exhibition was held in Shanghai, including Sri Lankan business representatives. Wu Zhibiao rushed to Shanghai to hold talks with Sri Lankan representatives, although the talks between the two sides were extremely difficult. Fortunately, Wu Zhibiao finally achieved cooperation with Sri Lanka and has since formed an inextricable bond with Sri Lankan coffee and black tea.

The road of relocating factories to pursue dreams has been bumpy several times.

In fact, Wu Zhibiao's career was not as smooth as he thought. He moved three times to the factory alone. Whenever he talked about this, Wu Zhibiao laughed and said that it was "good things take a long time."

In 2003, Wu Zhibiao opened the first coffee processing factory in Longgang with the funds accumulated by selling coffee by hand trailer. No sooner had the factory been built than it encountered SARS. During this period, all restaurants and bars had few customers, which directly led to a sharp decline in the purchase volume of merchants, and no one was interested in the coffee produced in the warehouse.

What is more serious is that as soon as SARS passed, his newly decorated factory building needed to be demolished as a result of land requisition for municipal works. When Wu Zhibiao prepared to receive demolition compensation in accordance with the relevant regulations, he found that due to his inexperience, the license of the leased factory was incomplete, and he could not get compensation from the government. In desperation, he had to abandon the factory in a hurry to rebuild.

Not long after the relocation of the factory, the domestic food industry began to implement the "QS" food quality and safety market access system. On the other hand, Wu Zhibiao's second factory, which was selected under a tight schedule, was not up to standard because it was too close to the road and the factory building was old. This made him once again face the choice of abandoning investment in decoration, relocating again, or simply "closing the factory and changing careers".

After several twists and turns, Wu Zhibiao had little money left at that time, but the former soldier decided to stick to it. After carefully examining a series of problems such as environment and procedures, Wu Zhibiao finally moved the factory to the present Longgang Pingshan. After the renovation of the new plant, Wu Zhibiao was so poor that he could not even pay his employees' wages. In an urgent situation, Wu Zhibiao sold the company's equity and introduced an investment shareholder. Just when he thought all the ordeal was going to be over and was ready to fight, he was hit by the 2008 financial turmoil, and other losses caused the shareholder to withdraw all his money overnight.

Wu Zhibiao said that at that time, it was as if he had been suddenly drained, at a loss. At the most difficult time, the Longgang District government learned about the specific situation of Wu Zhibiao's enterprises, and the government came forward to give enterprises a sum of "life-saving money" and provided enterprises with a number of free opportunities to participate in exhibitions and promote them at home and abroad. At this point, the cause that Wu Zhibiao has been supporting has finally ushered in the dawn.

Painstaking efforts to win honor for Shenzhen enterprises

In an interview with the reporter, Wu Zhibiao personally brewed a pot of rich and mellow coffee for the reporter, which was surrounded by fragrance, and he told the reporter about the culture of all kinds of coffee and black tea. Wu Zhibiao said it took him 10 years to integrate with the world's top 500 companies. From the beginning of importing a container and promoting it everywhere, it has grown to 35 containers a year, and then the purchase volume of an order this year is as high as 160 million RMB. His fate with coffee and black tea came down in his insistence. His company not only provides Sri Lankan origin coffee, black tea and other raw materials for many well-known domestic enterprises, but also has reached a cooperative relationship with the world's top 500 confectionery company.

Wu Zhibiao and his company have been valued by the Sri Lankan government because of the fast-growing quota of procurement trade. As a result, Wu Zhibiao was received by the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka at the Shanghai World Expo. At the dinner party, Sri Lankan Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne left his business card to Wu Zhibiao. Wu Zhibiao said that the moment he took over the premier's business card, the pride of being a Chinese and an entrepreneur in Shenzhen made people feel boiling.

For the future, he said, his dream is to become the number one supplier of coffee and black tea in China.