Most fast-talking guys from the US state of Florida are selling beachfront condominiums or time shares.

Jeff Torres wants to sell you a jianbing.

You may have seen his face today, grinning from the sides of Beijing delivery scooters, shopping centers and subway stations. The 30-year-old is the public face of Huangtaiji, a food empire built on the humble egg pancake.

Launched in 2012, the company now operates more than 30 restaurants in Beijing and about 10 in Shanghai, with plans to jump abroad for the first time this summer with a restaurant in Sydney. With individual orders totaling as little as about 35 yuan ($5.37), the company was generating more than 6 million yuan in sales per month by December 2015. The fast-food product even appeared in last year's superhero parody film Jianbing Man.

It was a Chinese entrepreneur groomed at Google and Baidu, 33-year-old He Chang, who saw potential innovation in the popular street food.

"I went from those high-tech companies to advertising and then finally to restaurants," says He, the founder and No 1 in a partners' group that now numbers seven. (Torres is No 6 and the only foreigner.)

"Fast food was a new thing for China after the opening up," says He. "KFC and McDonald's came in quickly and grew fast at first, but I saw a place for something that Chinese people could relate to better."

From the simple jianbing, He and his team quickly branched out into other quick-to-make fare. The second brand in the Huangtaiji family is Niu Dun, with a menu of stews and similar dishes. Next came Da Huang Fung, storefronts that offered hot pot.

"It's really a China dream," says He, who utters the popular phrase without making it sound like a cliche. He says most of his customers are between 25 and 35, many part of startups and looking for startup magic of their own. "They are making a good income," he says, "but they also like to grab a quick lunch that only costs about 30 to 40 yuan."

They also see themselves as part of an international world, an international mindset, he says. That's one reason the frontman for the company is not the more richly credentialed He, but Geoff the laowai - a former English teacher with the gumption not only to sell egg pancakes to Chinese but to teach Chinese how to make them.

"Yeah, I did," Torres laughs. "But that was because we were producing food on a large scale, and we needed consistency. Fast food was new," he says, "so I created a standard - I can make a really good jianbing - and then taught that standardization across our kitchens."

"At first, our model was open more restaurants, open more restaurants," says Torres. "But the overheads - the people, the rent, the advertising, the hardware - meant we were growing in sales but not in profitability. Then we started focusing on delivery as our growth model, and that changed everything."

In July 2014, he says while flipping through PowerPoint graphs, the company delivered 1,154 orders. One year later, it delivered 150,305.

"That put us at 5.3 percent of the delivery market share in Beijing", he says. "That showed us where the growth potential was." Social media has been key, which the company learned when it launched its first store in 2012. "We were on Weibo very early, one of the first," says Torres. "We were in the right place at the right time."

The delivery drivers in bumblebee-colored uniforms are paid by the order, says Torres, "so they have an incentive to deliver on time". Huangtaiji mobilized about 1,000 drivers on scooters last year as well as a few black-and-yellow Mini Coopers that serviced catered events.

Torres, meanwhile is out there in person as well as his virtual self. Later this month, for example, he hopes to be driving for Uber in a new promotion, ready to throw in a lunch deal with his rides.

"I've also become a champion of the rock-paper-scissors game," he says, laughing. "I've been known to go to stores - in my black and yellow outfit - and challenge people who recognized me to a game: Beat me at rock-paper-scissors and win a free jianbing!

michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/06/2016 page19)