Bubble tea

• 1. Introduction

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  Bubble tea goes by more names than most drinks can claim. Pearl milk tea, bubble milk tea, tapioca milk tea, boba tea, and plain boba all describe the same cup. At its core is tea, usually joined by milk and flavoring, with chewy tapioca balls resting at the bottom. The drink first appeared in Taiwan in the 1980s. It then followed East Asian communities into other countries. Who actually made the first cup, and why could no court settle the question? What goes into a cup, and how is it shaken and sealed? How did one drink become a national emblem in one place, a passing fad in another, and a marker of identity for immigrant families elsewhere? And what does all that sweetness do to the people drinking it?

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• 2. A Dispute Over Invention

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  Tea with milk and sugar reached Taiwan during the Dutch colonization, which ran from 1624 to 1662, though the habit never became common. Centuries later came a forerunner called bubble foam tea. Makers mixed tea with fructose syrup and shook it hard with ice cubes. The shaking raised a fine foam that gave the drink its signature texture. Unlike the modern pearl milk tea, it contained no tapioca balls at first.

  Two teahouses each claim the next step. The first is Chun Shui Tang, in Taichung. Its founder, Liu Han-Chieh, visited Japan in the 1980s and noticed that coffee was served cold there. He began serving Chinese tea cold, and the novelty lifted his business. Several chains followed. The company's product development manager, Lin Hsiu Hui, says she made the first bubble tea in 1988. During a staff meeting she poured tapioca balls into her tea and encouraged colleagues to try it. They liked it, it joined the menu, and it became the franchise's top seller.

  The rival claim comes from the Hanlin Tea Room in Tainan, which dates the invention to 1986. Its owner, Tu Tsong-he, was struck by white tapioca balls he saw in the market of Yā-mǔ-liáo. These were a traditional Taiwanese snack. He later brewed tea with them, and the result is known as pearl tea.

  In 2009 the two teahouses took each other to court, each hoping to be recognized as the original creator. The fight dragged on for roughly a decade. In 2019 a Taiwanese court ruled that bubble tea could not be patented, since it is a general food product that anyone may prepare. The ruling gave credit to neither side, so the recipe stayed open to every shop that followed.

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• 3. Inside the Cup

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  The oldest known bubble tea combined hot Taiwanese black tea with tapioca pearls, condensed milk, and syrup or honey. Today most cups are served cold. Drinks fall into two families, those without milk and those with it. Either one starts from a base of black, green, or oolong tea. Milk teas usually use powdered or fresh milk, but condensed, almond, soy, or coconut milk also appear.

  The pearls that give the drink its name were first made from cassava starch. Larger pearls quickly replaced them. Most pearls turn black from the brown sugar mixed in. The word boba is common in the United States but rare in Asia. It comes from a nickname for the Hong Kong actress Amy Yip.

  Toppings stretch well beyond tapioca. Jelly arrives as small cubes, stars, or rectangular strips, in flavors such as coconut, konjac, lychee, grass jelly, mango, coffee, and green tea. Azuki or mung bean paste, usual toppings for Taiwanese shaved ice desserts, add a subtle flavor and texture. Aloe, egg pudding, and sago turn up in many shops. Popping boba holds fruit juice or syrup inside each sphere, in flavors like mango, strawberry, coconut, kiwi, and honey melon. Some shops crown the drink with milk or cheese foam, which feels like whipped cream and tastes saltier. One shop said the cheese foam "neutralizing the bitterness of the tea...and as you drink it you taste the returning sweetness of the tea."

  The drinks themselves keep branching. Yuenyeung, named after the Mandarin duck, began in Hong Kong and mixes black tea, coffee, and milk. Others are blended with ice cream or fruit into smoothies. Taro, mango, coffee, and coconut are popular flavors, while milkless fruit teas lean on lychee, winter melon, and lemon. More recently, bars have poured so-called boozy boba, which mixes milk tea or fruit tea with vodka, rum, or soju. There is even a sparkling vodka seltzer sold under that name.

  Because no standard recipe exists, shops let customers set their own ice and sugar. Sugar is usually offered in 25% steps, from 0% up to 100%.

  Behind the counter, brewing is a matter of temperature and patience. Green tea steeps at a lower heat, around 176-185 F, for 8-10 minutes. Black tea needs water near 203-212 F and roughly 15-20 minutes to bring out its sweetness. A warming dispenser can keep the tea hot for up to eight hours.

  Most shops buy tapioca pearls uncooked, when they are hard and colorless. The pearls turn dark and chewy only after cooking and sweetening. Sealed in the package, they keep for around 9 to 12 months. Once cooked, however, most shops will not sell them after 24 hours, because they harden and lose their chew.

  The traditional method is to shake the ingredients in a cup by hand. Many shops now use a shaker machine, so a single barista can prepare several cups at once. Most Taiwanese shops serve the drink in a plastic cup, and a machine seals the top with heated plastic cellophane. That seal lets the tea be shaken inside the cup and keeps it spill-free. The customer then pierces the film with an oversized boba straw, wide enough for the toppings to pass through. In Southeast Asia, newcomers have tried bottles and even sealed plastic bags. The drink has also inspired boba ice cream bars, bubble tea candy, popcorn, cookies, and jelly beans.

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• 4. Taiwan's National Symbol

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  On the 30th of April 2020, Taiwan officially declared a National Bubble Tea Day. That same year, an image of bubble tea was proposed as an alternative cover design for the country's passport. According to Al Jazeera, the drink has become synonymous with Taiwan and an important symbol of Taiwanese identity, at home and abroad. It also stands in for Taiwan in the Milk Tea Alliance. One chain, 50 Lan, was founded in Tainan, the city of the Hanlin Tea Room. In 2020 the Unicode Consortium added a bubble tea emoji in its version 13.0 update. On the 29th of January 2023, Google marked the drink with its own doodle.

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• 5. Boom and Bust

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  Singapore was selling bubble tea as early as 1992, and by 2001 it had turned phenomenally popular with young people. Then intense competition and price wars set in. Most shops closed, and the drink had lost its popularity by 2003. Taiwanese chains Koi, arriving in 2007, and Gong Cha, arriving in 2009, brought only short resurgences. In 2018 interest rose at an unprecedented speed, helped by new brands such as The Alley and Tiger Sugar and by social media.

  Japan first met bubble tea in the late 1990s and shrugged. Because of the tapioca, buyers saw a hybrid of dessert and drink and were unsure how it should be sold. Two other desserts arrived at the same moment and outshone it. Only in the 2010s did the trend sweep the country, with shops from Taiwan, Korea, and China alongside local brands. Teenage girls coined a slang word, tapiru, short for drinking tapioca tea. It won first place in a 2018 survey of slang used by middle school girls. A bubble tea theme park opened for a limited time in Harajuku, Tokyo, in 2019.

  Vietnam met Taiwanese milk tea in the early 2000s, and young people took a few years to warm to it. By the late 2000s the trend had cooled, and many shops had to liquidate or close. Rumors hurt too, including talk of tea of unknown origin and pearls allegedly made from polymer plastics. In 2012 Taiwanese brands returned with a new model of toppings, chains, and spaces designed as carefully as famous coffee shops. Around the end of 2016 and the start of 2017 the drink's glow came back. A survey by Lozi found about 100 brands and over 1,500 points of sale in 2017, with 53% of people drinking milk tea at least once a week.

  South Korea tells a quieter story. Seoul has four well-known milk tea shops, Gong Cha, Cofioca, Amasvin, and Happy Lemon, where young people meet on weekends. Even so, milk tea is less popular there than in other East Asian countries. Gong Cha and Tiger Sugar are losing customers, partly to cheaper alternative drinks. Some hope the Chinese brand Hey Tea will revive the category with its marketing and its stress on high-quality ingredients.

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• 6. Chain Rivalries

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  Hong Kong already had a beloved tradition of its own, milk tea made from brewed black tea and evaporated milk. When Taiwanese chains such as Tiger Sugar, Youiccha, and Xing Fu Tang expanded there, they created a new wave of what people call boba tea.

  In mainland China, tapioca pearls entered milk tea in the 1990s, and demand has grown steadily since. An estimate from 2020 put bubble tea drinking at five times that of coffee. Taiwanese chains such as Gong Cha and Coco remain popular, but local brands like Yi Dian Dian, Nayuki, and Hey Tea now dominate. Among young people the drink has reshaped social habits. Buying someone a cup has become an informal way to say thanks. People queue for up to an hour at popular locations to photograph their order, because the cup signals an urban identity online.

  Malaysia met bubble tea in the late 1990s, and it surged in the early 2000s, especially in cities and night markets. The arrival of the Taiwanese chain Chatime in 2010 brought franchised outlets to major cities. By 2013 Malaysia accounted for around 50% of Chatime's global revenue. In 2017 a high-profile legal dispute between Chatime's franchisor and its Malaysian licensee, Loob Holding, led to over 160 outlets being rebranded as Tealive. Tealive has since grown into Malaysia's leading homegrown brand, with hundreds of outlets and expansion across Southeast Asia. Gong Cha, The Alley, and Chizu also keep a strong presence.

  Chatime, CoCo Fresh Tea & Juice, Gong Cha, and Kung Fu Tea rank among the largest global chains. One market estimate valued bubble tea at 2.4 billion in 2022 and projected 4.3 billion by the end of 2027.

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• 7. Boba Life Abroad

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  Taiwanese immigrants brought bubble tea to the United States in the 1990s, first to California, including Los Angeles County. Some of the earliest stand-alone shops were found in a food court in Arcadia, in Southern California, and at Fantasia Coffee & Tea in Cupertino, in Northern California. Chains such as Tapioca Express, Quickly, Lollicup, and Happy Lemon followed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Among Asian Americans the drink is simply called boba.

  In 2013 the Chinese-American brothers Andrew and David Fung released a music video called "Bobalife." Their phrase "boba life" came to describe a cultural identity that Asian Americans, as social minorities, could claim for themselves. It reflects a desire for cultural and political recognition. The same culture produced a mocking term, boba liberal, aimed at mainstream Asian-American liberalism. Boba shops also became social spaces where Asian American students build communities. One source notes that the casual atmosphere helps people break down social barriers and bond over shared identities.

  The drink has regional strongholds too. The Northeast and Southwest hold many shops, including Boba Tea Company in Albuquerque, No. 1 Boba Tea in Las Vegas, and Kung Fu Tea from New York City. In Albuquerque and Las Vegas it is especially popular among Hispano, Navajo, Pueblo, and other Native American, Hispanic, and Latino communities. Large coffeehouse chains later added their own versions, often as seasonal summer drinks. Caribou Coffee did so in 2018, Dunkin' Donuts in 2021, and Starbucks in 2024. TikTok trends and the Korean Wave also fueled its rise.

  In March 2021, a shipping and supply chain crisis on the US West Coast, plus the obstruction of the Suez Canal, caused a shortage of tapioca pearls in the United States and Canada. Most tapioca eaten in the US is imported from Asia, where the starch is mostly grown.

  In Australia, individual shops appeared in the 1990s alongside other regional drinks such as Eis Cendol. The Bubble Cup franchise opened its first store in Melbourne in 2002. Rapid immigration from Asia and a large cohort of Asian university students first drove demand in Melbourne and Sydney. Today the drink is popular across many communities. Mauritius saw its first shop open in late 2012, and most shopping malls on the island now have one. Teenagers treat them as hangouts.

  In the United Kingdom, bubble tea gained traction in the 2000s and 2010s, first in Asian-populated areas like Chinatown and Soho. Students especially like to customize their drinks. Assad Khan opened Bubbleology in London in 2011, after encountering the drink abroad.

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• 8. The Sugar Question

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  In July 2019, Singapore's Mount Alvernia Hospital warned about the high sugar content of bubble tea, just as the drink had become extremely popular there. The hospital acknowledged that green and black tea can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer. It cautioned, though, that non-dairy creamer and toppings raise the fat and sugar in the cup. Non-dairy creamer contains trans fat in the form of hydrogenated palm oil, which the hospital said is strongly correlated with a higher risk of heart disease and stroke.

  A 2016 study found that bubble tea fits the US Dietary Guidelines definition of a sweetened beverage. It warned against daily drinking, because a single 16-ounce cup exceeded the recommended amount of added sugar. The study worried that this sugar could worsen existing public health problems.

  Calories are a second concern. The tapioca pearls are rich in carbohydrates and can account for up to half the calories in a 500 ml serving.

  Some shops have started to respond. In Korea, restaurants and bakeries record calorie counts carefully to protect customers' health. At Gong Cha there, drinkers choose sugar at 0%, 30%, 50%, 70%, or 100%.

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