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Bubble tea is bizarre. I only recently stumbled upon it on a trip to Bankgkok after a local said "let's get something to drink". I fell in love with it immediat

Bubble tea is bizarre. I only recently stumbled upon it on a trip to Bankgkok after a local said "let's get something to drink". I fell in love with it immediately. It's something that has not yet fully permeated Northern Europe, and Helsinki (where I live) has (or had..) one or two places to get it from (pre-pandemic).

yocheckitdawg 6y ago
You should come to Melbourne CBD in Australia. I can only assume they are being used as fronts to launder money or as a business investment to secure residency as there seems to be no possible way even a city of Melbourne's size could consume this much bubble tea. It's almost at the point where there are bubble tea sellers directly next to each other in the street. And I'm talking dozens, if not hundreds, of them.
- girvo 6y ago
  Hah they’re here in Brisbane too. Not to the same extent, but give it time..,
- always_left 6y ago
  Kind of interesting, I'm in the bay area and it's similar, but have you seen the pricing? And amongst young asian-americans its identical to Starbucks, just a place or thing to do.
- chongli 6y ago
  It's almost at the point where there are bubble tea sellers directly next to each other in the street That’s an example of Hotelling’s law [1]. Competing businesses are better off clustering together in high traffic areas rather than spreading out to cover the market in a way that serves customers more efficiently. It’s a weird phenomenon and a clear refutation of the invisible hand. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law
  - 1996 6y ago
    > It’s a weird phenomenon and a clear refutation of the invisible hand. Actually it's the opposite: more choice is brought by the invisible hand where people naturally go to, even if it puts businesses in direct competition and thus reduce prices
- nmfisher 6y ago
  I can’t say for sure that they’re all not fronts. However, I know someone who owns one in the CBD and it is definitely legitimate - not to mention makes money hand over fist. There are tens of thousands of mainland Chinese living in the CBD, and it’s basically a daily staple for a huge chunk of them. Some of these places are charging $7-$8 for something that costs all of 20 cents to make. The margins are huge - the biggest difficulty is securing the right location with the right footfall.
  - hnick 6y ago
    I can't speak for the rent but from what I was told the setup (machines) is very cheap, as are the ingredients like you say. I'll also go out on a small limb and say food businesses with predominantly foreign student workers tend to have a history of underpaid cash wages. My wife was offered $6 an hour cash in the early 2000s at one place in Sydney, I think she was 17 but still that's way too little.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
The bubble tea in Bangkok is especially delicious, because it’s usually the bubble version of Thai tea (at least that’s what was most common when I lived there). Which is an especially delicious spiced black tea. The copious amounts of sugar it’s usually served with (or condensed milk) doesn’t hurt the flavor either.
peterburkimsher 6y ago
Some parts of Europe adopted it at different times, and curiously, it doesn't seem to be correlated with expat Asian population. I first tried 珍珠奶茶 at the top of Taipei 101 in 2009, and have always sought it out since. It was a thing in Daegu when I lived there in 2012. In Austria, I was surprised to see McDonalds having bubble tea in mid-2012! It was the popping-bubbles though, not tapioca. I discovered new flavours (e.g. Yakult) in Shenzhen in 2013, and drank it daily in Taiwan from 2014-2018. (not always milk, I'd mix it up with passion fruit, pineapple, grapefruit, whatever else). My favourite way to explore was to ask for "yi yang" - the same as the person before. My favourite was actually NuPasta, then Coco, then Xian Cha Dao, then 50 lan. There was one place where it only cost 30 NTD, but one time I got it without sugar and realised it tasted awful, so after that I realised I should pay 50-70 NTD for slightly better quality. Unfortunately the Gong Cha and Chatime in Auckland don't accept my loyalty cards from Taiwan :-P
Reason077 6y ago
Bubble tea shops have become pretty ubiquitous in London in recent years. There must be hundreds of them across the city! There's one ('CUPP') opened up around the corner from me recently and there always seems to be a long queue outside in the evening, both regular customers and deliveroo riders picking up orders...
- eat_veggies 6y ago
  I wish CUPP had been around when I lived in Whitechapel! I used to have to walk all the way up Mile End for the Yi Fang stand (and sip it in the park!), or go to the shops in Shoreditch during work
eunos 6y ago
Surprisingly Berlin has quite a lot Boba place. At least a dozen

yocheckitdawg 6y ago

You should come to Melbourne CBD in Australia. I can only assume they are being used as fronts to launder money or as a business investment to secure residency as there seems to be no possible way even a city of Melbourne's size could consume this much bubble tea. It's almost at the point where there are bubble tea sellers directly next to each other in the street. And I'm talking dozens, if not hundreds, of them.

girvo 6y ago
Hah they’re here in Brisbane too. Not to the same extent, but give it time..,
always_left 6y ago
Kind of interesting, I'm in the bay area and it's similar, but have you seen the pricing? And amongst young asian-americans its identical to Starbucks, just a place or thing to do.
chongli 6y ago
It's almost at the point where there are bubble tea sellers directly next to each other in the street That’s an example of Hotelling’s law [1]. Competing businesses are better off clustering together in high traffic areas rather than spreading out to cover the market in a way that serves customers more efficiently. It’s a weird phenomenon and a clear refutation of the invisible hand. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law
- 1996 6y ago
  > It’s a weird phenomenon and a clear refutation of the invisible hand. Actually it's the opposite: more choice is brought by the invisible hand where people naturally go to, even if it puts businesses in direct competition and thus reduce prices
nmfisher 6y ago
I can’t say for sure that they’re all not fronts. However, I know someone who owns one in the CBD and it is definitely legitimate - not to mention makes money hand over fist. There are tens of thousands of mainland Chinese living in the CBD, and it’s basically a daily staple for a huge chunk of them. Some of these places are charging $7-$8 for something that costs all of 20 cents to make. The margins are huge - the biggest difficulty is securing the right location with the right footfall.
- hnick 6y ago
  I can't speak for the rent but from what I was told the setup (machines) is very cheap, as are the ingredients like you say. I'll also go out on a small limb and say food businesses with predominantly foreign student workers tend to have a history of underpaid cash wages. My wife was offered $6 an hour cash in the early 2000s at one place in Sydney, I think she was 17 but still that's way too little.

AmericanChopper 6y ago

The bubble tea in Bangkok is especially delicious, because it’s usually the bubble version of Thai tea (at least that’s what was most common when I lived there). Which is an especially delicious spiced black tea. The copious amounts of sugar it’s usually served with (or condensed milk) doesn’t hurt the flavor either.

peterburkimsher 6y ago

Some parts of Europe adopted it at different times, and curiously, it doesn't seem to be correlated with expat Asian population. I first tried 珍珠奶茶 at the top of Taipei 101 in 2009, and have always sought it out since. It was a thing in Daegu when I lived there in 2012. In Austria, I was surprised to see McDonalds having bubble tea in mid-2012! It was the popping-bubbles though, not tapioca. I discovered new flavours (e.g. Yakult) in Shenzhen in 2013, and drank it daily in Taiwan from 2014-2018. (not always milk, I'd mix it up with passion fruit, pineapple, grapefruit, whatever else). My favourite way to explore was to ask for "yi yang" - the same as the person before. My favourite was actually NuPasta, then Coco, then Xian Cha Dao, then 50 lan. There was one place where it only cost 30 NTD, but one time I got it without sugar and realised it tasted awful, so after that I realised I should pay 50-70 NTD for slightly better quality. Unfortunately the Gong Cha and Chatime in Auckland don't accept my loyalty cards from Taiwan :-P

Reason077 6y ago

Bubble tea shops have become pretty ubiquitous in London in recent years. There must be hundreds of them across the city! There's one ('CUPP') opened up around the corner from me recently and there always seems to be a long queue outside in the evening, both regular customers and deliveroo riders picking up orders...

eat_veggies 6y ago
I wish CUPP had been around when I lived in Whitechapel! I used to have to walk all the way up Mile End for the Yi Fang stand (and sip it in the park!), or go to the shops in Shoreditch during work

eunos 6y ago

Surprisingly Berlin has quite a lot Boba place. At least a dozen