Meet the Yewale brothers, who make Rs 1.2 million a month selling tea

It took four years for the Yewale brothers to re-enter the tea business, juggling visits and samplings with their other ventures

The steady trickle at Yewale Amrutalay turned into a flood this past week. The lure: the fascinating fact that a simple tea shop can clock a turnover of Rs 1.2 million per month. And there has been interest far beyond its zone of operations, Pune. “We have got calls from over 200 people for franchises, including New York and Dubai, since the news broke on Saturday,” says co-founder Nilesh Yewale.

The ramp-up in revenue occurred within a month of the opening of the second branch near Dagdusheth Ganpati temple, but the Yewale family has been in the business for long. Dashrath Yewale, Nilesh’s father, first used to sell milk and then began working at a tea stall. Yewale senior later set up his own shop at Salisbury Park in 1983. When he passed away in 2001, the family ventured into real estate, giving the original establishment, Ganesh  Amrutalay at Salisbury Park, on rent. “That [real estate] business didn’t pan out so we decided to return to our roots,” says Nilesh Yewale.

The five Yewale brothers had had another idea: to build a brand around tea. “In Pune, we have Joshi Wadewale and Rohit Wadewala but there was no famous tea brand here. There are many chai lovers here but most of them don’t get the taste they desire,” Navnath Yewale told ANI. The search for the “perfect tea” took the brothers to highways and famous tea stalls, sampling varieties of tea and milk and fiddling with proportions. “We spent close to five months standardising our tea, by using the same proportion of milk, tea and sugar across all our branches,” says Nilesh, adding that even the boiling time is fixed to ensure the taste.

On the whole, it took four years for the brothers to re-enter the tea business, juggling visits and samplings with their other ventures. “We started with a small stall to test the waters, but the response was phenomenal. So we started the first tea shop at Bharati Vidyapeeth in Katraj in 2017.” Operating from 5 am to 9.30 pm, the tea shop sells over 5,000 cups of tea across two branches every day, with each cup priced at a humble Rs 10. 

The plan ahead is to stick to the tried and tested milk tea. “We don’t want to venture into different kinds of tea or snacks. If you have too many options, the workers get confused and the quality is lost,” says Nilesh, who worked for a few years with his father. The clarity of that vision comes in handy for the family, none of whom boast fancy marketing or MBA degrees.

But it hasn’t stopped them from thinking big. “We are targeting 100 outlets, including a few international ones,” says Nilesh, admitting that selling milk tea to foreigners might be a task. On the domestic front, the family is eyeing Mumbai and Nashik. 

“Unlike the ‘pakora’ business, the tea business is also creating employment. This business is growing fast,” Navnath told ANI. The reference is, of course, to the storm in the teacup that erupted last month when the PM said, “If a person selling pakoras earns Rs 200 at the end of the day, will it be considered employment or not?” The resulting furore around “chai-pakora economics” found its way to Parliament.

Navnath may not be wrong when it comes to Yewale tea house. A measure of its scale is that the tea shop needs “900 kg sugar and 400 kg tea” a month to churn out the countless cups of tea. He’s not wrong about the employment factor either: “We should be able to employ more than 10,000 people in the next few years.”