Guava Fruit Tea Ingredient Shift and the Coffee Connection

As April ends, the red-fleshed guava supply season is winding down. HEYTEA's seasonal guava fruit tea series, featuring red-fleshed guava, is being removed from the menu. The company announced it will replace red-fleshed guava with white guava, keeping the limited-edition drinks available. On launch day, a buy-one-get-one-free promotion caused a surge in store orders and noticeably longer wait times for consumers.

The new version still has a pale pink appearance, but taste feedback is polarized. Some feel it is similar to the old version, while others say it is too sweet and the guava flavor is weaker. Industry insiders note that white and red-fleshed guava differ inherently in sweetness and flavor. Combined with adjustments to other ingredients in the formula, differences between the new and old versions are unavoidable, sparking a heated debate among fans.

April is drawing to a close, and the supply season for red-fleshed guava is about to end. Heytea's seasonal guava fruit tea series, which features red-fleshed guava as its star ingredient, is also facing removal from the menu. However, fans' enthusiasm has not waned, and the company quickly announced it would replace red-fleshed guava with white guava, allowing the two limited-edition drinks "Refreshing Guava Grape" and "Refreshing Guava Grape" to continue selling. On the day the new products launched, Heytea rolled out a buy-one-get-one-free promotion, triggering a surge in store orders and noticeably longer wait times for consumers. The new version of the drinks still has a pale pink appearance, but taste feedback has been polarized: some feel it is not very different from the old version, while others report that it is too sweet and that the guava flavor has become weaker. Industry insiders point out that white guava and red-fleshed guava differ inherently in sweetness and flavor, and combined with adjustments to other ingredients in the formula, differences between the new and old versions are unavoidable.

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April is already more than half over, and the market supply of red-fleshed guava is gradually shrinking, soon to enter its final stage. Affected by this, Heytea's seasonal limited-edition guava fruit tea series, which once used red-fleshed guava as its core ingredient, is also about to exit the menu and say goodbye to customers who love this drink.

However, a large number of fans' enthusiasm for Heytea's guava fruit tea has not cooled. The company therefore recently announced that the red-fleshed guava used to make the drinks would be replaced by white guava, and that the sales period for the two seasonal limited-edition drinks "Refreshing Guava Grape" and "Refreshing Guava Grape" would not end because of the red-fleshed guava supply cutoff.

As soon as the news came out, many guava lovers were immediately overjoyed, showing undisguised anticipation for the new version of the drinks. On the first day the new products went on sale, Heytea simultaneously launched a buy-one-get-one-free promotion, directly driving a sharp increase in sales of the revamped guava series.

Judging from store photos uploaded by netizens, after the promotion started, the counter of their nearby store was already filled with cup after cup of freshly made cold drinks. Looking up, the two slush machines on the shelf were running nonstop, with no chance to shut down and cool off.

The surge in orders caused drink ingredients to be consumed rapidly, and coupled with the complicated production process for this series of cold drinks, staff could only prepare ingredients while fulfilling orders. Many consumers wanting a cup of the new guava drink often had to wait more than half an hour.

Even so, the unexpected situation did not dampen fans' enthusiasm, and many customers who placed orders still patiently waited for staff to make the drinks. However, after receiving Heytea's new products, many people noticed that judging by appearance alone, the upgraded cold drinks were not obviously different from the old version. The drinks still had a pale pink color rather than the light white some netizens had predicted.

As for how the updated guava drinks actually taste, the first batch of customers who tried them gave mixed reviews. Some felt after tasting that they were not very different from the old version and were still refreshing and tasty, admitting that they could not taste any change in flavor after the ingredient switch.

Others felt that the new guava cold drinks were noticeably sweeter than the old version. They said that even though they had adjusted the sweetness when ordering, they could still taste a very obvious sweetness on the first sip: "Even with very, very, very little sugar it's still super sweet, and it's sweet even with no added sugar," "I ordered less sweet, and it almost did me in..." "I ordered less sweet and diluted it with water twice." A small number also felt that after the ingredient change, the drink's own "guava flavor" was less rich than before, saying bluntly that it was not as good as expected.

In response to the various feedback on social platforms, netizens familiar with guava analyzed that white guava and red-fleshed guava differ in texture and sweetness, so the fresh juice extracted from them naturally tastes different as well. Therefore, the new version of the guava drinks will inevitably taste somewhat different from the old version.

In addition, according to the official drink formula and what Heytea staff said, the guava series, besides freshly squeezed juice, also adds guava juice and freshly peeled green grape pulp to adjust the drink's flavor and texture, so the new products will taste different from the guava cold drinks in some customers' memories.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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