What does the Heytea guava drink recall about coffee blending?

Heytea launched the Nanjiang Licorice Guava Bottle in late February, combining guava juice with south ginger plum powder, licorice powder, dried tangerine peel powder, preserved plum powder, a tea base and oil mandarin juice. Chaoshan consumers said the south ginger flavor they remembered was missing, while drinkers outside the region questioned how strong the ginger tasted.

Several customers also found a circular sealing paper inside the bottle, which Heytea customer service said was food-contact-grade material and safe to consume. The suspected cause is the double-layer seal being pushed in by the straw. The layered build is closer to coffee blending and mixing coffee than to a simple fruit drink, which is why small errors show up so clearly in the cup.

At the end of February, Heytea launched a new product inspired by Chaoshan licorice fruit called the "South Ginger Licorice Guava Bottle," mixing guava juice, south ginger plum powder, licorice powder, dried tangerine peel powder, preserved plum powder with a tea base and oil mandarin juice, in an effort to replicate the flavor of street-side licorice fruit. However, after this thoroughly Chaoshan-flavored new product hit the market, controversy kept brewing: Chaoshan consumers generally reported that they couldn't taste the south ginger flavor they remembered, while customers from outside the Chaoshan region were full of doubts about how strong the ginger taste was and whether it was spicy. More notably, multiple consumers drank a complete circular sealing paper from the bottle, suspected to be caused by the double-layer sealing design that allowed the paper to be poked into the drink by the straw. Heytea customer service responded that the paper was a food-contact-grade material and did not affect consumption. This article will sort through the R&D thinking behind this new product, its packaging design, and the ins and outs of the foreign object incident.

▲

Click to follow | Daily specialty coffee culture magazine Coffee Works

Just as the two popular drinks in the guava series returned as scheduled, Heytea struck while the iron was hot and launched a brand-new single-item inspired by Chaoshan licorice fruit on the last day of February — the "South Ginger Licorice Guava Bottle" — simultaneously available in stores nationwide.

In the Chaoshan area of Guangdong, licorice fruit is a snack seen everywhere on street corners and in alleys. Freshly cut fruit mixed with south ginger and licorice can bring out the sweet-and-sour taste of the flesh itself, quench thirst, and add a unique aroma to the fruit.

Heytea's new product follows exactly this pairing logic: blending ripe guava juice with pungent south ginger plum powder, then incorporating licorice powder, dried tangerine peel powder, and preserved plum powder, supplemented by a refreshing tea base and oil mandarin juice, attempting to use a distinctive combination of ingredients to create a cup of "drinkable licorice fruit."

In its promotion, Heytea repeatedly emphasized that this new product, rich in Chaoshan flavor, contains ingredients such as south ginger, licorice, dried tangerine peel, and preserved plum. Therefore, for locals in Chaoshan, aside from caring about how it tastes, what they care about more before ordering is actually "whether you can taste the south ginger flavor." Unfortunately, many netizens who tested it reported that even when they specially noted to add extra south ginger when ordering, they ultimately could not recover the familiar south ginger aroma in this drink.

As for consumers outside the Chaoshan region, many have no idea what south ginger is at all, and before ordering they posted questions one after another asking "Is the ginger taste strong?" "Are there ginger shreds in it?" "Will it be spicy when drunk?" Some promotional posts even deliberately held up a piece of ginger for a photo, leaving Chaoshan netizens not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

In terms of packaging, Heytea borrowed the common kraft paper wrapping method of Chaoshan gongfu tea, fixing the paper at the bottle mouth with a rubber band, and also customized a dedicated cup sticker in the same color scheme for this product, making the whole new drink more visually recognizable. As soon as the new product launched, fans of its looks were drawn in by this packaging and resolved one after another to get it as soon as possible.

However, faced with this exquisite new packaging, some people also posted videos complaining: while drinking the south ginger guava, they actually fished a complete sealing cup pad out of the cup, and by the time they discovered it, the drink was almost finished.

Similar situations were not isolated cases. Another netizen also encountered "added ingredients" while drinking this new product, and the foreign object in the bottle was likewise that sealing paper. Shortly after the post was published, consumers with the same experience appeared one after another, and they coincidentally showed off the "same drink as the blogger" in their hands — a bottle of south ginger guava with a circular sealing paper soaking in it.

If only one person had encountered it, perhaps it could still be attributed to chance, but now that so many people have reported the same problem, it shows that something indeed went wrong at some stage. In response, some netizens asked Heytea customer service to verify, and customer service explained that what fell into the cup was actually the circular paper piece used to seal the straw opening, which is a food-contact-grade material and therefore does not affect drinking.

According to store employees, Heytea's new packaging this time uses a double-layer sealing structure. When packing, staff need to first place a circular plastic foam pad, tighten the lid, and then cover it with kraft paper and secure the rubber band. However, because the lid itself already has a circular sealing paper, when the straw is inserted into the drink, if a little too much force is used, it is very easy to poke the sealing paper underneath into the milk tea as well, ultimately turning into the awkward situation of "adding ingredients to yourself."

Image source: online screenshot

Disclaimer: Some images in this article come from the internet. For some content on the website, such as images, we will respect the original author's copyright and indicate the source, but due to the large quantity, there will be individual images and texts that have not yet been credited in time. Please understand. If the original author has any disputes, they can contact the website for handling. Once verified, we will correct it immediately. Compiled and edited by "Coffee Works." Please indicate the source when reprinting. If there is infringement, please inform us for deletion. Thank you~!

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