'Let's just start', ZUS Coffee CEO on growth without a perfect playbook

After building its footprint across Southeast Asia, ZUS Coffee is now looking further afield, with Morocco, the UK and the Maldives in its sights.

Yet behind its growing international footprint is a strategy that is less rigid than might be expected. Rather than working from a five-year plan, ZUS Coffee group CEO Venon Tian said the Malaysian coffee chain favours moving quickly, learning from each market and adapting along the way.

"In ZUS, there's no such thing as a five-year plan. Everything is yesterday," Tian said during a fireside chat at Digital Marketing Asia Malaysia this year.

That approach has taken ZUS from a 200-square-foot store in Malaysia to a regional brand spanning markets including Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Along the way, however, Tian said the company has learnt that moving fast does not mean simply replicating what worked at home.

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Its experience in the Philippines proved that point. After entering the market following investment from a Philippine investor in 2023, ZUS initially approached the business much as it had in Malaysia.

Candidly he shares, "We struggled in the Philippines for the first two years because we were replicating what we were doing in Malaysia, in the Philippines. But it's a totally different ball game and we learnt from it," Tian said.

Making data everyone's business

ZUS' digital-first beginnings have also influenced how it operates internally. Tian said the company has worked to make metrics such as customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value relevant to employees running physical stores, rather than keeping data within marketing and corporate teams.

ZUS has as such developed dashboards to help teams understand performance and make more informed operational decisions. "We used to call ourselves the number one delivery coffee company. Now we call ourselves the number one tech coffee company," Tian said.

With thousands of employees across its markets, embedding that mindset becomes more challenging as the company scales, particularly across retail operations. For Tian, however, data literacy is increasingly part of ZUS' culture rather than a capability reserved for marketing or technology teams.

Ultimately, ZUS' approach combines data with a willingness to act before every answer is available. As its footprint grows, the philosophy remains relatively simple:

Start somewhere, learn quickly and change what doesn't work.

Expansion first, answers later

This desire to experiment and change on the go have now shaped how ZUS thinks about international growth. Tian believes that different markets serve different purposes. For example, Singapore was approached partly as a brand-building market, while Thailand appealed because of the strength and creativity of local brands. Indonesia, meanwhile, emerged as another opportunity as ZUS expanded its regional footprint.

Rather than waiting for the perfect expansion formula, Tian said ZUS prefers to move, learn and adapt as it goes. "Let's just start. That's really how we do it," he said.

The philosophy reflects ZUS' broader approach to growth. The company had around 60 stores in 2021 before growing to 180 in 2022. Rather than slowing down, it decided to keep pushing. Tian said:

We said, since this works, let's continue to push. Either go big or go home.

A recipe for local relevance

The same philosophy shapes ZUS' approach to product innovation. While its early menu development relied heavily on experimentation, the company now uses sales data to identify ingredients and flavour profiles that consistently resonate with consumers.

When entering a new country, however, data is only part of the equation. Tian said one of his first stops is often McDonald's or KFC, where he studies how global brands have adapted their menus to local eating habits. That thinking has led ZUS to experiment with products ranging from ube-inspired drinks in the Philippines to Thai milk tea and a tom yum Americano in Thailand.

Not everything works. The tom yum Americano, Tian admitted, did not gain significant traction among Thai consumers. But the learning was to adapt and if need be, fail fast. He said: 

If it doesn't work, take it down. If it works, make it permanent.

Nonetheless, for all the data at ZUS' disposal, Tian said understanding a new market still requires getting on the ground. Store visits, conversations with consumers and an understanding of local culture help the company determine which ideas can travel across borders and which need to be reworked.

"There is the more data-driven approach, which you can utilise to understand what contributes more to sales. The other one is really understanding locally, and this requires a lot of store walking, speaking to people, understanding local culture and tweaking along the way," Tian said.

The lesson has become particularly important as ZUS expands beyond Malaysia: a successful home-market formula does not automatically translate elsewhere.

And for marketers looking to get their CEOs behind similarly bold ideas, Tian's advice was to start small, demonstrate results and use those learnings to make the case for a bigger bet. He said: 

Try it out, have some results and prove it first, and then you can go all in and push it further.

That thinking now shapes how ZUS tests new products. Rather than immediately rolling out an idea across its network, Tian said the company can introduce a product across 20 to 30 stores, gather data over three to four weeks and use those results to determine whether it warrants a bigger push.

Doing so also helps the company manage logistics, supply chain considerations and marketing budgets before committing at scale.

Ultimately, Tian's advice to marketers was less about chasing an immediate big win and more about proving what works first.

Small experiments can provide the evidence needed to make bigger moves, and, crucially, get the CEO on board, he advises.

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