Where Does Coffee Come From, and Why Did a Tea Brand Struggle in the US?

Heytea's Rowland Heights store in Los Angeles, its first location in North America, has permanently closed. It opened in September 2024 and stopped operating on May 22, 2025, lasting less than a year. Regular customers were surprised, since the shop once drew long queues in a heavily Chinese-populated area.

Nearby residents said they saw it coming. Possible reasons cited include a remote location, inconvenient parking, rental costs, relatively high drink prices, and growing competition from peers. The store briefly closed in March 2025 and reopened before shutting for good, and it has since disappeared from Google Maps.

The Heytea store that opened in Rowland Heights, Los Angeles, USA, has recently been confirmed to be permanently closed. The store operated from its opening in September 2024 to the end of business on May 22, 2025, lasting less than a year. As Heytea's first store to shut down in North America, this news has sparked considerable attention and discussion among consumers. Regular customers were surprised by the sudden closure of this milk tea shop that once had long queues, while nearby residents said they had seen it coming. Factors such as the store's remote location, inconvenient parking, rental costs, relatively high drink prices, and intensifying competition from peers are considered possible reasons why the store struggled to survive. This article will review the course of events, consumer feedback, and the possible operational challenges behind it, while also offering selected recommendations from the Front Street brand for coffee and tea enthusiasts.

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Recently, several American netizens posted on social platforms that the Heytea store in Rowland Heights, Los Angeles, has permanently ceased operations.

According to local residents, this Heytea store officially opened in September 2024. It briefly closed in March this year and reopened after a period of rest. However, what regular customers did not expect was that when they passed by again, they found a bilingual notice in Chinese and English posted on the glass door, informing them that the store had stopped operating as of May 22.

In many people's memories, when the Rowland Heights store first opened, it attracted a large number of fans to visit and take photos, and at one point there were long lines at the entrance. In addition, since Rowland Heights itself is a Chinese-populated area, this Heytea store did fairly well in both dine-in and takeout business. "I went to Rowland Heights twice in February, and there were still a lot of people," and "Every time I go, it's packed with people."

For this reason, a milk tea shop that seemed to be doing quite well suddenly posting a closure notice after less than a year in business, and then disappearing from Google Maps, left fans who had planned to come buy a drink stunned. They could not help but lament that this should be the first Heytea store they knew of to close in North America.

However, nearby residents did not seem surprised by the closure of the Rowland Heights store. They said that compared with the brand's other stores in Los Angeles, the Rowland Heights location is actually somewhat out of the way and not easy to find.

Moreover, many customers who come to buy drinks are used to driving there, but the plaza where the store is located can provide only a limited number of parking spaces, making parking very inconvenient. Therefore, some people said outright that they would give up spending because parking was too troublesome. "The main issue is that the location is too bad," "Last time I wanted to go but couldn't find a parking space below, so I left," "The location probably wasn't chosen well, it's just not convenient at all to buy milk tea," "Parking is inconvenient, every time I pass by I never go in."

In addition to the unappealing location, some netizens revealed that the reason this store, which had been open for only 9 months, closed may be related to factors such as venue rent and drink prices not being accepted by the local market. Previously, a user shared the approximate cost of opening a Heytea store in the United States, saying that franchisees not only have to bear expenses such as store rent, labor, and materials, but also have to pay the brand owner service fees such as franchise fees and deposits, making the overall cost of opening a store relatively high.

Therefore, in order to maintain profitability, the unit prices of products at Heytea stores in North America are slightly higher than in China. Judging from the menu when the Rowland Heights store opened, tea drinks in the store were basically between 6 and 10 US dollars, which converts to about 43 to 72 yuan RMB for a cup of milk tea. For consumers already used to paying more than 20 yuan for a cup of milk tea in China, this price may be hard to accept, so some people admitted that they only went once to check it out and did not repurchase afterward.

In addition, as tea beverage brands such as Chagee, Yidiandian, and Molihua Bai successively expand overseas and open stores, local milk tea consumers have more and more choices, and the market competition pressure Heytea faces in North America has clearly increased. So in the view of some people, considering factors such as market layout and operating costs, it is also understandable that this Heytea store lost out in fierce competition among peers.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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