Bubble tea booms in Flushing
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Sam Lin works at CoCo Bubble Tea store in Flushing on Nov. 24. Photos by Baidi Wang.
By Baidi Wang
Special to the Eagle
It was past 10 p.m. on a Wednesday night in Flushing, but customers continued streaming into Tiger Sugar on Main Street to buy the shop’s most popular bubble tea: brown sugar boba milk with cream mousse.
“The last one,” said cashier Xinyu Li as he handed a customer the beverage, loaded with flavorful pearls. “You’re lucky!”
As Flushing’s Chinese population grows, so does its bubble tea industry. Li said there are now more than 20 bubble tea stores in the neighborhood .
“It’s very competitive now, but I think young people here like bubble tea very much, so there will be more and more customers,” he said.
This isn’t a neighborhood full of coffee shops. Asian residents, including immigrants, make up 52.6 percent of the population in Community District 7, which covers Flushing, according to the city’s Community District 7 profile. Many say their drink of choice is bubble tea — flavored tea-based beverages, originally made in Taiwan, that are loaded with tapioca pearls or jellies. In Flushing, a medium cup of bubble tea costs around $5, compared to $4 for a grande mocha at Starbucks.
A popular bubble tea store in Flushing. There is often a long line of customers in front of the store.
“I never drink coffee,” said Liren Zhang, 23, a Columbia University student who came to the U.S. five years ago. Zhang said he buys a bubble tea every time he goes to Flushing.
“We don’t drink coffee in China ,but we always drink bubble tea,” he said.
Zhang’s friend Yao Dai, 22, agreed. “I usually buy bubble tea at least three times a week,” he said.
Another factor driving the beverage’s rapid rise may be the trend of “famous bubble tea” — versions that have gone viral online. Tiger Sugar’s brown sugar boba mile with cream mousse attracts a lot of attention on social media and wins many positive comments on Yelp.
One review named Lucy Z. said the lines outside bubble tea purveyors illustrate the drink’s popularity.
“If you are ever in Flushing and see two long lines by the bus stop, the longer one is usually for tiger sugar,” Lucy said. “ I didn't understand what the craze was about until I had it for the first time and it definitely met — maybe even exceeded —my expectations.”
Mariska Kop, 22, said she came to Flushing with her friend Veronica Lee, 22, on a recent Sunday specifically for Tiger Sugar bubble tea. They said they had seen a post about the shop in a Facebook group called Subtle Asian Traits.
“It is very popular on social media,” Kop said. “So we decided to try it this weekend.”
If one bubble tea shop is successful, others will follow, said Rebekah Chi, 19, who works at Teas My Dear on Main Street in Flushing. “There are so many bubble tea stores in China, especially some famous ones on the Internet,” she said. “So people here are opening more and more bubble tea stores to make profits.”
Albee Pan, the shop’s manager, agreed. “Under such a trend, it’s not strange that people want to make money,” she said.
The bubble tea boom in China has made its way to the U.S., said Allen Wu, 35, who works at the popular Flushing shop Mi Tea.
“Mi Tea actually had the first bubble tea that was famous on the internet in the U.S.,” Wu said. “Then more and more ‘famous bubble tea’ came up after us.”
