Chinese beverage entrepreneurs are increasingly setting their sights on the American market, hoping to convert young coffee and matcha drinkers with innovative tea offerings.
Leading this charge is Amanda Wang, co-founder of the rapidly expanding Chinese chain Ningji Lemon Tea, who undertook four research trips to the U.S before launching Bobobaba, a brand specifically tailored for American palates.
Bobobaba’s vibrant, Instagram-friendly drinks, featuring fruit pieces, boba pearls, and distinctive logos, are designed to appeal to a new demographic. Wang, whose Chinese venture is backed by tech giants Tencent and ByteDance, believes the U.S presents a significant opportunity.
“The U.S is a developing country in terms of bubble tea,” she told Reuters, noting that Bobobaba’s U.S-centric recipes are sweeter than those offered in China.
However, adapting to the American business landscape has presented its own hurdles. Wang highlighted the stark contrast in operational speed, where opening a store in the U.S took seven months, compared to just 20 days in China.
“Doing business here (in the U.S) is quite different from what we imagined in our heads. It took seven months to open the store, which was quite painful,” she explained, outlining a cautious ten-year expansion strategy for the U.S.
Despite these challenges, a wave of other Chinese tea brands, including Chagee Tea House, Chahalo, Molly Tea, and Auntea Jenny, have either opened U.S outlets or announced expansion plans in the past year. Their confidence stems from considerable success in China’s modern tea-drink market, driven by flavour innovations, fresh branding, and rapid store rollouts.
Mixue, which has leveraged its $1 fruit teas to become the world’s largest food and beverage chain by stores, with over 53,000 locations globally, announced a ten-year storefront lease in New York City in September.
“Everyone is looking at the U.S as a potential market,” said Felix Lin, the CEO of a Nevada-based distributor for Asian food products, HF Foods, who said he has received a growing number of calls from Chinese food and beverage chains.
Chagee, which listed on the NASDAQ in April, has over 80 personnel working full-time on the company’s “significant pipeline” for U.S expansion, Emily Chang, the company’s top U.S executive, told Reuters in November. It plans to open a large flagship store in the heart of Silicon Valley next year.
Chang, previously an executive at Starbucks China, said part of Chagee’s plans includes a public campaign to promote tea among U.S consumers and to establish it as a new product category.
This mirrors how Starbucks popularised coffee in tea-drinking China nearly 30 years ago. In November, Chagee launched the “evening tea service,” a bespoke experience that offers a flight of three teas and a tea sommelier, in part to show U.S consumers that tea can be enjoyed in the evening.
Demand for coffee tends to drop off in the early afternoon, Chang said.
Most of these brands have found success beyond China’s highly-competitive market, where annual revenues for tea-drinks will exceed 30 billion yuan ($4.2 billion) this year, per estimates from Hongcan Research Institute.
