Bubble expands: Tea shops branching out

Bubble tea shops are bubbling up all over the New York area, as the Chinese brands move beyond Manhattan for more affordable spaces.

Bubble tea originated in Taiwan in the 1980s and is generally a mix of tea, usually served cold, with fruit or milk; tapioca balls or fruit jellies are often added. The "bubble" is the foam created when the tea is shaken.

Tiffany Wang, operations manager for CoCo Bubble Tea Corp, a Taiwanese tea company, said that the company is trying to appeal to New York's growing ethnic communities.

Elmhurst, Queens, has become a desirable location for the bubble tea shops. Within three years, more than seven different bubble tea shops have settled in Elmhurst, a diverse community.

James Huang, executive manager of the Vivi milk tea shop, just opened a new branch in Elmhurst. Vivi already has more than 14 outlets in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

"We had been expanding our business for more than eight years," said Huang. "We have a reliable system of quality control."

Huang said that the Chinese community was always the priority when starting bubble tea businesses in the US. "Chinese immigrants were more familiar with our brands," he said.

However, Huang said the Chinese community is not the only consideration. He said that "diversified ethnicities", including Indians, Latin Americans and Southeast Asians in Elmhurst, have discovered the product.

Wang said that in some CoCo outlets, most of the customers are not Chinese.

"Chinese businesses sometimes went into cutthroat competition, and therefore, non-Chinese communities have more potential," Wang said.

Wang said CoCo Bubble Tea was launching a new promotion in New York: a brandy bubble tea beverage that once swept both the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.

Alex Chen, owner of Panda Tea, a well-established Chinese milk tea shop just a minute's walk from the Vivi bubble tea shop in Elmhurst, was not afraid of the influx of Chinese beverage and milk tea shops because they offered "products not merely catering to Chinese tastes".

Chen said that when CoCo Bubble Tea came to the neighborhood, at first he was unnerved by the competition. But later, he found that there was almost no impact on his sales.

"Generally speaking, we remained as popular as before," Chen said.

Many of the bubble tea shops were driven out of their previous locations because of high rents, said Jenny Zhang, a local real estate agent who has handled several bubble tea shop rentals.

Zhang said the rents in Flushing, Queens, home to the largest Chinese immigrant community not only in New York City but in the US, have been soaring in recent years.

"They (bubble tea businesses) are trying to find similar locations with affordable rents like Elmhurst," she said.

According to Zhang, the rent in Flushing is more than twice that in Elmhurst.

"Some of the units' rent (per square foot) is even higher than Rockefeller Center," she said.

Long Yifan in New York contributed to the story.

(China Daily USA 01/07/2016 page1)