26 yuan per cup, waiting 1 hour in line—is premium Thai milk tea making a comeback?

Author | Restaurant Owner Insider, Insider Jun

$26 per cup, 1-hour wait

Thai Milk Tea Still Heating Up

In major shopping malls in first- and second-tier cities, “off-season” Thai milk tea has become popular.

Many shops open and immediately become hits, with queuing becoming the norm, and some stores even achieve daily sales of over a thousand cups.

For example, Tamkoko Thai Tea Garden, with a single cup priced around 25 yuan, is extremely popular. It is reported that its Suzhou store has an average repurchase rate of about 25% per month. The brand’s expansion speed is impressive—opening its first store in April 2025, and by mid-February 2026, it has already opened over 160 stores nationwide, making it a dark horse brand.

Another rising brand in 2025 is Zheng Shilong Traditional Thai Tea, which also targets the mid-to-high-end market, with an average customer spend of about 28 yuan. Its core selling points are traditional methods, handmade processes, and slow-cooked clay pots, quickly sparking queuing frenzy. The brand opened its first store in Zhongshan, Guangdong, at Vientiane City in April last year, with a first-month revenue of 500,000 yuan and a peak daily revenue of 29,000 yuan.

Shanghai-based OUO Thai Tea opened its first store in June 2025. With its signature Gelato products and minimalist decor, it quickly became a local beverage hotspot, expanding to Suzhou, Wuxi, and other cities. By March this year, it had opened 14 stores, most of which are first stores in their cities.

Black Tree·Black Tree Thai Tea, focusing on rich flavors of Thai tea, cocoa, and coffee, has opened 14 stores across 12 cities as of February 14 this year. Locations include Shenzhen Bay Vientiane City, Shanghai West Bund Dream Center, Beijing Wangfujing Zhonghuan, and other key commercial districts. By the end of February, the brand even opened a store in Xinjiang.

Why is Xin Tai Milk Tea So Popular?

The rapid emergence of these brands actually hits a key turning point in the milk tea industry—from scale expansion to deepening quality—by innovating within niche segments to unlock new growth.

Compared to early Thai milk tea, we can clearly see a category upgrade.

Earlier Thai milk teas were characterized by a “magnetic” appeal. The most typical example is Big Beard Iced Cocoa, which uses the founder’s ID photo as the brand logo. Consumers could choose cocoa concentration based on beard length, and the brand quickly gained popularity thanks to its strong memorability.

But these new Thai milk tea brands are redefining what “Thai-style” means.

1. Downplaying street labels, emphasizing quality, conveying relaxation

Early Thai milk teas often relied on regional symbols. For example, Chunlai used plastic bags to serve milk tea, creating a sense of difference and restoring local street culture, quickly gaining market recognition through strong local identity.

The new generation of Thai milk tea brands, however, are more aligned with young people’s current desire for “relaxation,” emphasizing chill, leisure, and slow living. This is reflected in store decor, which generally uses calm, low-saturation colors like white and brown, visually removing Thai symbols and emphasizing modern minimalism.

In terms of location, they have shifted to shopping malls, leveraging the high exposure of flagship stores and the mature facilities and stable foot traffic of malls to strengthen brand reputation and support subsequent scaling.

2. Upgrading health and taste, emphasizing “traditional methods” and “handmade” to enhance quality

Traditional Thai milk tea is often criticized for being overly sweet and heavy with a monotonous flavor. The new Thai milk teas return to tea’s core, incorporating niche flavors like “salty” and “bitter,” paired with products like “cheese” and “ice cream,” achieving a rich yet not greasy, layered taste that reduces consumers’ concerns about sweetness.

Alongside flavor upgrades, brands further reinforce value through visible handmade processes. For example, Zheng Shilong Traditional Thai Tea sets up clay pots in stores, allowing customers to see the entire process of brewing tea and preparing ingredients, strengthening the perception of “natural handmade” quality.

3. Diversified products to create new repeat purchase hooks

Facing the limitations of traditional Thai milk tea’s single product form and limited innovation, these new brands diversify SKUs. For example, the popular “Thai Milk Tea Snow Top” combines core tea drinks with ice cream, a subtle innovation.

Some brands also introduce heavy, addictive categories like coffee and cocoa, solving seasonal limitations of traditional Thai milk tea (mainly summer-only) and connecting different consumer needs to further enrich consumption scenarios.

4. Group backing, shifting from individual efforts to systematic operations for greater efficiency

The rapid rise of these new Thai milk tea brands is partly due to strong group support. For example, Black Tree Thai Tea is a new brand created through collaboration between OUO Thai Tea, Seoul Dessert Shop PIE IN THE SHOP, and others. Tamkoko Tea Garden was incubated by the Jiushiye team, with 7fen Tian handling recruitment and cloud operations. The core advantage of group backing is not just innovation of popular products but also supply chain, site selection, standardized operations, and financial support provided by the team.

The Bubble of Niche Tea Drinks

How Long Will Thai Milk Tea Remain Popular?

Looking at the overall tea market, the leading landscape has stabilized, and the focus has shifted from pursuing scale to deepening quality.

In a competitive environment with existing players, new brands succeed by creating new niche values and offering consumers differentiated, fresh experiences. Recently, niche categories like brown sugar pearl milk tea, handmade lemon tea, regional特色奶茶, and new Chinese-style desserts have risen one after another. Thai milk tea is a typical example of this niche explosion.

Thai milk tea has transformed from a niche business into a strong dark horse in the tea market, with leading brands and cross-industry players entering the scene.

Since last year, brands like Heytea, Lelecha, Chabaidao, and Shanghai Auntie have launched Thai-style products. In early March this year, McDonald’s also introduced Thai Milk Tea Snow Ice, further popularizing the category.

Behind the craze, there are still concerns.

On one hand, as more players enter, product homogenization intensifies, with elements like salty cheese Thai milk tea being widely copied. On the other hand, some brands have complex production processes, and online complaints about slow service and long queues have appeared, which could harm brand image.

In the long run, if brands can maintain authentic flavors, improve efficiency, and ensure quality, Thai milk tea still has the potential to become a stable, sustainable high-quality niche in the tea market.

Chief Editor | Dai Lifen

Visuals & Illustrations | Zhang Jinying

Operations | Snow Ice