If you have been down the West End recently, and in particular on Shaftesbury Avenue between the Curzon Cinema and the Palace Theatre (now almost known as the Harry Potter Theatre) you may have noticed even more young Chinese people than normal, all hanging around looking happy and clutching bubble teas. Now why is this?
It is because Hey Tea, one of the most famous Chinese tea drink chains has opened in London. Hey Tea was founded in 2012 in Shenzhen. It started off as a small tea store called “Royal Tea” and quickly expanded into other cities across Guangdong and China, dropping the original name “Royal Tea” and adopting “Hey Tea” in the process. Hey Tea is wildly popular there with over 1000 stores in China, 4 in Singapore and now 1 in the UK.
Hey Tea is famous for its modern interior design, photogenic packaging and innovative drinks and is one of millennials’ brands of choice. Its signature items are various cheese tea and fruit tea. Cheese tea is a new one on me, and uses a cheese mixture that is a blend of New Zealand’s Anchor cheese, milk, cream and salt.
So is it any good? For this, I enlisted the help of my eleven-year-old daughter who is a bubble tea fanatic.
We tried a mango-based fruit tea and a berry-based cheese tea. Her verdict – epic and the best she has ever tasted. I thought – well, quite an addictive little drink (albeit nothing little about the size of the drinks) with soft, beautifully textured and annoyingly addictive jelly pieces which are larger than the “bubbles” I had encountered before. Lots of fresh fruit. Sweet (that’s how people seem to like it) but with a moreish one more sip quality.
So. Turns out they know what they are doing on this bubble tea front. My daughter’s main wish: “can they open more branches please”.
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