Do We Need More Bubble Tea?

Customers wait over an hour for bubble tea at Tiger Sugar in Causeway Bay

 Would you wait over an hour for bubble tea?

It's all the craze in Hong Kong which I find bizarre as bubble tea was the drink of the 80s and now it's back again?

This bubble tea shop is social media savvy

Over a month ago a colleague told me about a shop called Tiger Sugar that opened in Causeway Bay and people were willing to wait over an hour for the drink -- even though they were wilting in the heat.

And landlords are greedily rubbing their hands together at the thought of more bubble tea brands coming to the city looking for spaces to rent.

Since July there were 62 different brands of bubble tea in Hong Kong with 282 shops.

Do we really need more?

Apparently the demand is there. These shops just need 250 sq ft to 300 sq ft preferably near schools, offices, where young people hang out like Mongkok, Jordan, Causeway Bay, Central.

And the shops are financially able to afford rents now that they have dropped about 20 percent since the peak in 2014. With rents at around HK$300 to HK$400 per sq ft, that means the total rent could be HK$90,000 to HK$120,000. That's a lot of cups of bubble tea to sell.

People take pictures to show others what they're drinking

What is driving the demand is social media -- people posting pictures of the drinks they have bought, raving about how long they waited and yet the bubble tea was so good. Those looking at the pictures feel like they're missing out.

Not me!

Bubble tea drinks are hardly healthy, as it's the giant tapioca balls are made of starch, which means lots of sugar. No one really finishes all those tapioca balls and even worse the drinks are served in plastic cups with plastic straws. Hardly environmentally friendly.

And we're going to have more bubble tea shops?

This craze is temporary and then many of these shops are going to close down. Then again I might be wrong, but it's definitely breeding a lot of potential diabetics in the future...