How the history of the coffee shop industry echoes milk tea trends

Milk tea toppings have cycled through decades of change since 1987, when Taiwan's Chun Shui Tang added tapioca pearls to tea and created pearl milk tea. The combination spread to the mainland in 1997 and inspired endless variations. In 2007, CoCo combined pearls, pudding and grass jelly into one drink, the combination later known as the Milk Tea Three Brothers.

Toppings have since moved in the opposite direction. Lemon tea is often ordered plain, while duck shit aroma, Buddha's hand, turmeric and peach gum appear as new options. The pattern mirrors the history of the coffee shop industry, where signature add-ons define an era and then give way to simpler, ingredient-focused drinks as customer tastes shift.

Ordering a milk tea now, pudding, pearls, and grass jelly are already standard options. Thirty years ago, the earliest milk tea was far less rich. Since 1987, when Taiwan's Chun Shui Tang tossed tapioca pearls into milk tea, the matter of adding toppings has gone through a long process of being banned, recombined, cross-industry innovations, and niche fruits taking turns on stage. CoCo都可 combined pearls, pudding, and grass jelly into one drink, which led to the later familiar "Milk Tea Three Brothers." Now the direction of toppings has changed again; lemon tea is more popular without toppings, and new faces like Duck Shit Aroma, Buddha's Hand, turmeric, and peach gum are appearing one after another. This article sorts out the key moments in milk tea toppings and also shares some observations from Front Street Coffee on current tea beverage trends.

Order a milk tea and you can get pudding, pearls, and grass jelly.

In the past, pudding, pearls, and grass jelly were collectively called the "Three Big Veterans of Milk Tea" and were part of the standard milk tea combination, but today these three no longer feel as eye-catching as they once did.

The earliest milk tea was best known as "pearl milk tea," and pearl milk tea originally spread from Taiwan.

In 1987, a cold drink tea shop in Taiwan founded in 1983, "Chun Shui Tang," suddenly hit on an idea: add the local snack tapioca pearls to milk tea. Unexpectedly, the texture was surprisingly good, and consumers loved it. This milk tea was later named pearl milk tea and became Taiwan's hottest internet-famous milk tea that year.

Chun Shui Tang, the birthplace of Taiwan pearl milk tea

In 1997, pearl milk tea entered the mainland market, and the "Boba Milk Tea Delivery Cart" attracted the attention of many young people.

The practice of adding pearls to tea also provided an endless source of creative inspiration for later milk tea toppings.

In 2012, a rumor spread in society claiming that the pearls in pearl milk tea were made of plastic, and as a result pearls were "banned."

In 2007, CoCo都可 combined three single toppings—pearls, pudding, and grass jelly—into one, immediately drawing everyone's attention again. Gradually, pearls were replaced by red beans, and during the same period, coconut jelly, pudding, agar, and others also became mainstream choices for milk tea toppings.

In 2009, Wu Bochao, founder of Happy Lemon, introduced "milk tea top toppings" to the mainland, and Heytea launched its Cheese Tea series, becoming an instant hit and setting off a wave of cheese-topped tea across the country.

In 2013, the nationally popular milk tea brand Shanghai Auntie crossed freshly cooked five grains with tea to create the first "Five Grain Tea," which became wildly popular nationwide for a time. Oats, highland barley, wood ear, silver ear, glutinous rice, black beans, chickpeas, and more also began to be included in the list of milk tea toppings.

After 2015, cheese-topped tea and fruit tea became more popular.

By 2018, Heytea launched "Brown Sugar Pearl Fresh Milk," continuing to stir up a trend. Taro paste, crystal boba, mochi, and a host of ingredients commonly used in desserts also became directions for milk tea toppings.

And today, the style has changed again.

Lemon tea without toppings is deeply loved by young people. According to previous Tianyancha data, there are more than 1,000 lemon tea-related enterprises nationwide, among which 440 were newly added in 2021.

The toppings added to milk tea have also been replaced with rosemary, cinnamon, silver ear, goji berries, peach gum, turmeric, and so on.

In addition, the tea beverage shop ChaBaiDao used a niche fruit to launch Buddha's Hand lemon tea; ShuYi ShaoXianCao combined taro paste with chestnuts to launch Chestnut Taro Paste Earl Grey Milk Tea; Shanghai Auntie upgraded collagen jelly and launched collagen fruit jelly; a Chongqing brand, HuaYan Tofu Fresh Milk Tea, used tofu to launch tofu fresh milk tea; Lan Fong Yuen also used kale to launch the "Too Green" series of vegetable and fruit milk teas...

Not long ago, a topic #HowDeliciousIsDuckShitAromaMilkTea# climbed onto Weibo's trending list. As of October 26, Nayuki's newly launched product—Duck Shit Aroma Treasure Tea—generated 150 million views on Weibo and sparked 34,000 topic discussions. Overnight, Nayuki's Duck Shit Aroma Treasure Tea became famous across the length and breadth of the country.

And such innovative cases are everywhere in the tea beverage industry, making people can't help but speculate: perhaps this will be the development trend of new-style tea drinks in the future.

Image source: Internet

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.