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.