任何喜爱85度C的海盐咖啡或芋头酥等奇怪混合美味的人，或许很容易将这家咖啡连锁店的老板吴政学(Wu Cheng-Hsueh)想象成一个古怪的食品研究者，充满激情地发明各种匪夷所思的口味与食材的组合。
吴政学办公室外热闹的候客室也会给人这种印象。办公楼坐落在台湾一个商业园区，而候客室的摆设就像一家85度C咖啡店，两名员工在吧台后面操作着咖啡机，欢快地为客人提供饮料和小吃。
但他的办公室内部却十分简朴，一张四四方方的桌子，沙发也略显陈旧。吴政学身着一件扣得严严实实的黑衬衫，举止稳重，外表严肃。他坦言道："我从未对餐饮业怀有特别的兴趣。我只是哪儿赚钱我去哪儿。"
办公室的一面墙上镶着一块大理石板，这是在向他创建85度C之前曾经拥有的众多不同公司之一致敬。这些公司帮助他积累了资金，最后于2004年创建了这家连锁咖啡店。起初，85度C只在台北市郊有一家门面，而如今，该品牌已经在全台湾拥有300多家店面，并已扩张至大陆，甚至在澳大利亚和美国也开了几家分店。去年，85度C以美食达人(Gourmet Master)为名，在台湾证交所上市。
吴政学从提供"买得起的奢侈品"中看到了商机，由此创建了85度C；为此，他用各种原料做试验，寻找附加值。店名源自吴政学的一个理念：即85摄氏度是饮用咖啡的最佳温度。
在孩提时代，由于父亲一直从事临时工作，吴政学一家经常从台湾一地搬到另一地。他只读到高中毕业，从未有机会读大学。如今已44岁的他，仍记得20岁出头第一次买车――一辆丰田凯美瑞(Toyota Camry)――时的场景。"我开心极了，拿到车的第一夜，我就睡在车上，"他说道。
在创立第一家85度C之前，吴政学曾开过发廊、鞋底工厂和装修公司，还有几家别的公司。
23岁刚服完兵役那年，吴政学与一些朋友合伙开了间发廊。"需要的启动资金并不多。我们刚好有一个小店……我也认识一些理发师朋友，所以我们决定把钱凑到一起开店，"吴政学语气温和地说道。由于不懂任何理发知识，"我负责与顾客闲聊。"
6个月后，与一位拥有一家制鞋厂的顾客的一次闲谈，促使他离开发廊，开了一家生产橡胶鞋底的工厂。
说到这儿，吴政学粗犷的褐色脸庞上突然绽放出笑容。对于再次进入这样一个与以往完全不同、自己同样没什么经验的行业，他并没有过多的强调。"我感觉自己可以成功，因为这并不太需要任何专业技术或知识。如果我不懂，我只要找到懂的人来做就行了。"
他表示，在自己创建过的公司中，赚钱水平有高有低。"但我从未因为任何一家公司亏过大钱。如果亏了，我也不可能创建下一个公司。"
不过，85度C连锁店是他迄今最大的成就。由于积极发展特许经营者，该连锁店得以迅速扩张，不出两年，就实现了超越星巴克(Starbucks)、成为台湾第一大咖啡连锁店的目标。吴政学甚至设法确保他的咖啡豆与星巴克来自危地马拉同一家优质供应商。一年后，85度C便进入中国大陆。
这不是他第一次涉水大陆――那家鞋厂就有部分橡胶鞋底是在大陆生产的。尽管大陆的成本更低，但他发现生意却难做得多，两年后，他卖掉了股份，回到台湾，那一年，他27岁。接下来他创办的公司是内部装修承包商，主营大理石业务。这让他遭遇了人生第一个重大挫折――在房地产市场崩盘后，客户未能付款。这些经历带给他的教训，现在都用到了85度C上。"我更喜欢拥有自己的品牌，"他说，并补充道，食品零售业"都是现金业务……至少不会出现任何坏账。"
创立85度C的念头，是吴政学与一些同事在台北君悦大饭店(Grand Hyatt)喝下午茶的时候萌发的。"东西非常美味，但价钱对于大多数人来说确实难以承受，"他表示。他们开始思索，是否有可能提供和五星级酒店一样水准的糕点和咖啡，价格却只有其一半。
吴政学从包括君悦在内的台湾顶级酒店雇来糕点师和面包师，制作85度C特有的与众不同的面包和蛋糕，例如墨鱼汁面包，以及用葡萄酵母制作的面包。他的宗旨是保证价格合理的同时，通过标准化大规模生产，确保食品不失新鲜。所有生面团都在中央厨房内备好并冷冻，再运至各个店面烘烤。
吴政学对这家企业最大的投资，也是最大的挑战，就是招人和员工管理。"餐饮公司最大的难题在于人员管理……你该如何培训他们？这不像是在工厂，每个人都干着同样的事情。"在大陆，这个挑战尤其突出。在那里，由于各家店面的地理位置相隔甚远，85度C一直奉行直营策略，而不是通过特许经营。
由于不懂如何为咖啡连锁店培训没有经验的员工，吴政学决定模仿肯德基(KFC)和麦当劳(McDonald's)，制定非常具体的操作指南，应用于所有店面。
他还从肯德基和麦当劳挖人。"肯德基和麦当劳刚进入大陆时，那儿还没多少（训练有素的）餐饮（员工），所以它们培训了大量员工，"他表示。"现在，这些人已成为资深员工，我到（大陆）后，就能直接捡便宜。"
虽然曾从肯德基和麦当劳偷师零售经验，但他表示："现在我们有一万多名员工，零售只是整个运作的因素之一。"他正越来越关注工序和物流，例如在不断加大糕点生产规模方面的创新。
吴政学选择上市的部分原因是为了融资，以便将大陆店面数量从目前的150家左右增至计划中的1000家。与其他首次上市的企业家一样，这一步意味着一个重大改变。"现在每一个人都会监督你。你必须对监管部门负责，对股东和社会负责。但为了公司的可持续经营，这是必须迈出的一步。"而他说，积极的一面是，"正因为有这么多人盯着你的公司，但凡你做错点什么，自己立刻就能知道，这样的话，你就能改进，让公司变得更好。"
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001040689
Anyone who has enjoyed such concoctions as the sea salt coffee or the taro-flavoured marbled bread served in Wu Cheng-Hsueh's 85C cafés might easily picture him as an eccentric food scientist fervently devising surprising combinations of flavour and texture.
Then there is the lively waiting room outside his office in a Taiwan business park. Laid out just like one of 85C Bakery Café's coffee shops, two employees work coffee machines behind the counter and cheerily offer drinks and snacks.
But inside his plain office, with its solid desk and slightly worn sofas, Mr Wu's demeanour is sober and his appearance in a black buttoned-up shirt is serious. "I was never especially interested in the food and beverage business. I just went where there was money to be made," he says candidly.
On one office wall is a slab of marble that is a nod to one of the many and various entrepreneurial ventures that preceded 85C, and that helped him amass the funds to start the chain in 2004 with one outlet on the edge of Taipei. The 85C chain now has more than 300 outlets across Taiwan and has expanded into mainland China, with a few outposts in Australia and the US. Last year it listed on the Taiwan stock exchange as Gourmet Master.
Mr Wu set up 85C after he saw an opportunity to provide "affordable luxury"; hence the experimenting with ingredients in search of added value. The name comes from Mr Wu's belief that 85 degrees centigrade is the best temperature to serve coffee.
As a child, Mr Wu moved around Taiwan frequently as his father pursued a succession of casual jobs. He just managed to graduate from high school and never had the opportunity to go to college. Now 44, Mr Wu still recalls the first time he was able to afford a car � a Toyota Camry � in his early twenties. "I was so happy that I slept in the car on the first night I got it," he says.
Before opening the first 85C store, he had set up a hair salon, a shoe-sole factory and an interior decoration business, among several others.
Mr Wu started the hair salon with some friends as a 23-year-old fresh out of military service. "The start-up funds needed were not big. We just had a small shop ... I knew friends who were hairdressers, and so we decided to pool our money," says the softly spoken Mr Wu. With no haircare expertise, "I was responsible for chatting with the customers".
Six months later, a chat with a customer who owned a shoe factory inspired him to leave the hair salon to open a factory making rubber soles.
Mr Wu's tanned, rugged face breaks into a smile as he makes light of entering such a different business where, again, he had little experience. "I felt I could make a go of it because it didn't really involve any special technology or knowledge. If I didn't understand it I just found someone who did," he says.
Among all his ventures, some have made more money than others, he says. "But I never lost big on any of my ventures. If I had, I wouldn't have been able to start the next business."
The 85C chain is, however, his greatest success by far. It expanded quickly, thanks to aggressive recruitment of franchisees, and within two years it had achieved its goal of overtaking Starbucks as the biggest coffee chain in Taiwan. Mr Wu had even made sure he sourced his beans from the same premium Guatemalan supplier as the US chain. A year later, 85C expanded into China.
It was not his first foray into mainland China � he manufactured some of his rubber soles there. Costs were lower, but he found business much tougher there and after two years he sold his stake and returned to Taiwan, aged 27. The next venture, as an interior decoration contractor specialising in marble, was when he experienced his first big setback � customers failed to pay when the property market crashed. These experiences taught him lessons that he is now applying to 85C. "I prefer having my own brand," he says, adding that, in food retail, "which is an all-cash business ... at least there won't be any bad debts."
Mr Wu got the idea for 85C when he and some colleagues had afternoon tea at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Taipei. "It was very tasty, but the price was certainly not affordable for most people," he says. They wondered if it would be possible to make pastries and coffee as good as a five-star hotel's, but sold at half the price.
Mr Wu hired pastry chefs and bakers from Taiwan's top hotels, including the Grand Hyatt, to make 85C's trademark unusual bread and cakes, such as a squid-ink buns and bread using yeast grown on grapes. He has aimed to keep prices affordable without the product losing freshness by using standardised, large-scale production. The dough is prepared in a central kitchen, frozen and then shipped to the stores to be baked.
The biggest investment Mr Wu has to make in the business, he says, is also the biggest challenge � recruiting and managing people. "The most difficult thing about a food and beverage business is managing people ... how do you train and educate them? It is not like a factory where everyone is in the same place." This is especially the case in China where the cafés, which are directly operated by 85C instead of through franchisees, are spread out geographically.
With little idea of how to prepare inexperienced employees for working in a café chain, Mr Wu decided to emulate KFC and McDonald's and institute a very specific set of instructions that would be common to all cafés.
He also hired staff from the two big US chains. "When KFC and McDonald's went to China there weren't a lot of food and beverage [trained employees] there, so they trained a lot," he says. "Now those people are senior staff and when I went [to China], I was able to pick up a bargain [by hiring them]."
While he looked to KFC and McDonald's for ideas on retail, he says: "Now that we have more than 10,000 staff, the retail side is just part of the whole equation." He is increasingly focusing on processes and logistics, such as innovations in preparing pastries on an ever bigger scale.
Part of the reason for listing was to raise funds to expand the current 150 or so 85C shops in China to a planned 1,000. Like other entrepreneurs who have listed for the first time, the move represents a big a change. "Everyone becomes your supervisor. You have to be responsible to the regulator, your shareholders and society," he says. "However, in order to run a sustainable business, this is a path that must be taken." Looking on the bright side, he says, "It is because there are all these people scrutinising your company that you know immediately if you are doing something wrong, and that way, you can improve and run a better company."
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