Línlǐ Lemon Tea Founder Wang Jingyuan: AI applications should prioritize solving the most core problems first

On March 25, the 2026 China Foodservice Industry Festival and the 35th HCC Global Foodservice Industry Expo, jointly hosted by the World Chinese Cuisine Association and Hongcan.com, were held at the Hangzhou Convention and Exhibition Center. Among them, during the roundtable session of the “2026 China Foodservice AI Development Forum,” Wang Jingsyuan, founder & chairman of Linli Lemon Tea, shared the brand’s practices and reflections on applying AI.

△ Wang Jingsyuan, founder & chairman of Linli Lemon Tea

Wang Jingsyuan introduced that the development of SaaS systems has already spanned more than a decade, and Linli has accumulated a great deal of information about members’ consumption habits and user consumption scenarios. What can this data be used for? If we list them in detail, there could be more than a hundred uses. But at this stage, Linli’s focus is to use this data to concentrate on product development—to explore why certain products become bestsellers—and to actively participate in the process of product R&D.

Second is store opening planning. Currently, Linli’s goal is to open 2,000 stores, and within the next three years, raise that number to 5,000 stores.

Third, Linli also needs to find excellent store model templates. Therefore, after accumulating a large amount of data, it is also thinking about how to use that data effectively. Overall, it is about starting from the most basic and simplest customer needs, achieving tiered and refined operations by providing high-quality products and choosing the right geographic locations.

On the practical application level, Wang Jingsyuan also gave examples. For instance, Linli developed a tea product; with a scale of nearly 2,000 stores, the costs and investments in procurement and inventory are substantial. If the product can’t be sold, the cost is also very high. Based on this, during the raw material development stage, Linli deeply studies consumer taste trends, repurchase habits, and repurchase scenarios, and predicts when the product will be sold out after rolling out across many stores nationwide, what its sales will be like, and who the target customers are.

Last year, Linli firmly pushed for full online operations, adopting the Feishu system to enable the collection and use of data. This is a very useful and important step in the product development process.

Finally, Wang Jingsyuan also emphasized that, at this stage, Linli will not pursue comprehensive AI applications. Instead, it will prioritize solving the most core problems—starting from product development and store model templates—and gradually extend into more areas.

Author: Hongcan Editorial Team