Prática de Shadowing: Why Chinese Bubble Tea Chains Are Brewing Billions - Aprenda a falar inglês com vídeo

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It's sweet
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It's chewy
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And it's bubbling up into billion-dollar empires
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We have now three bubble tea IPOs that have come to the Hong Kong market
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A standard cup of bubble tea retails for roughly $5 But once you subtract the cost of ingredients,
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labour, advertising and fixed overheads like rent and utilities
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the profits shrink fast Take into account the industry's average profit margin of about 20%,
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and business owners are making about $1 in earnings per $5 cup.
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So how do all these tiny transactions add up into a billion-dollar business?
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From humble tea stalls to initial public offerings raising hundreds of millions, Chinese bubble tea brands are stirring up serious money,
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turning founders into overnight billionaires and flooding Hong Kong's stock market.
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Gu Ming there making its debut on the Hong Kong market.
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Mi Xue meaning Honey Snow making its debut in the Hong Kong market.
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Auntie Jenny, Debuting in Hong Kong market.
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But beneath the foam lies a tougher question.
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How can these brands stand out in a crowded and competitive space?
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And with everyone racing to go global, is the bubble about to burst?
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This story's origins began in Taiwan in the 1980s.
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Bubble tea, or boba, is a blend of milk tea and chewy tapioca poles.
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The drink was playful, refreshing, and quickly became a local hit.
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As Taiwan's economy grew, so did its cafe culture.
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But it was mainland China that turned bubble tea into a modern-day gold rush.
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By the turn of the century, rising middle-class incomes and urbanization filled demand for lifestyle beverages.
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The drink became a beloved symbol of Taiwanese culture and national identity, even inspiring a national bubble tea day.
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But it didn't stop at home.
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The bubble burst onto global shores like Southeast Asia, the US and even the Middle East.
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Globally, freshly made beverages, FMP market is a huge market.
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If we are talking about the market size back in 2023,
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we are talking about 779 billion market size and is expected to grow to 7.2% CAGR per year by 2028.
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Over the course of just four months in 2025, three bubble tea chains stirred up Hong Kong's IPO market.
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In February, Gu Ming fizzled, raising $232 million but closing 6.4% below its listing price on day one.
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Mishra scooped up $444 million and rocketed 47% at the bell.
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Aunty Jenny sought 75% above its listing price and raised about 35 million intraday in May.
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I think this is the right place at the right time.
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A lot of global investors, they are trying to invest in the sector less sensitive to the US tariff.
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So domestic consumption, younger generation consumption is more stable or less vulnerable sector.
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In terms of the stock price performance, they are up around 20% to 150%.
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So most of them actually outperform the relevant indices in the region.
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The key difference is the expectation of growth.
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So who's currently sipping the biggest share?
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Mi Xue now runs over 46,000 stores globally, exceeding American-grown fast food chains, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Subway.
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Once considered the gold standard of cafe culture in China, Starbucks is now steadily losing ground.
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It's interesting that Starbucks isn't just facing competition from homegrown Chinese coffee chains, but also bubble tea chains that are now selling coffee for coffee-style drinks.
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So people like to say that in China, the line between bubble tea and coffee is often blurred.
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As coffee and tea brands compete for the same consumers, the real battleground boils down to scale, pricing, and franchising.
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And that's where Chinese bubble tea chains are rewriting the playbook.
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V-Share is the most aggressive one in terms of store opening up.
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In 2024, they are growing at around 22% in new store growth, and almost 100% of their store is franchising.
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Vsher is also targeting, I would say, the budget or price cautious clientele.
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It has taken that low cost model across the borders.
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Its biggest overseas markets include Vietnam and Indonesia, and it has managed to undercut some rivals there and grab market share by pricing below their rivals.
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Auntie Jenny, I think their business model is targeting Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities.
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New store growth, we are talking about 56% plus.
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In terms of pricing, they're slightly higher than Wexuan.
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Gu Ming, I would say, is on the mid-tier side.
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We are talking about US$1.5 to US$2 per drink.
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Gu Ming is targeting in tier 2 cities.
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Among the three, they are growing the lowest.
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The real money is in the model.
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Most of these brands don't run the stores themselves.
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Instead, nearly every outlet is franchised.
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A franchisee pays an initial setup fee, often ranging from $30,000 to $80,000, depending on the country.
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They buy ingredients through the brand's central supply system and pay ongoing royalties.
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This could be a fixed monthly fee or a percentage of revenue.
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So how do you scale that across countries, cultures and consumers?
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To find out why franchising has become the dominant model, we spoke to Gong Cha,
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a Taiwanese-born bubble tea brand with over 2,000 stores across 28 markets globally.
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We map the world quite carefully in terms of the potential upside for our franchise.
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Number one, is the consumer ready for it?
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People are moving away from coffee into tea, particularly the younger generation.
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Our core audience is smart young women under 30, and that growing base of consumers,
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high-frequency users of category, means that we can land in countries and have a great business day one.
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Second, we look at how complex it is of the supply chain, and can we land and make sure we have a profitable business for our franchise partners.
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If you've got those two things together, consumer and a profitable model, then we're ready to go.
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But franchising isn't always a straight shot to success.
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While the parent company collects royalties, franchisees often bear the brunt of rising rents, intense competition and small margins.
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And when too many outlets pop up, maintaining a consistent customer experience across regions becomes increasingly difficult.
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The normal payback period for the business owner, for the franchisee, is between 18 to 24 months.
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At the same time, the market close rate for the franchisee is around 20% in general.
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Another issue is store location.
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Some operators are squeezed even further when new outlets open just metres away.
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In some areas, multiple niche stores are located on the same street, just 200 metres apart.
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Online complaints are growing louder, with critics accusing the company of prioritising expansion over franchisee profitability,
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shifting risks onto small business owners.
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An operator or the business owner, they face competition that there is another franchisee opening up next door to you because product differentiation is no difference.
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So if you have to differentiate it by service, the quality, maybe you know your smile.
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Their success increasingly depends on the strength of their supply chains.
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So take MeSwe for example, it's built more like a supply chain business than a T brand.
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The company's revenue actually mostly comes from selling raw materials, ingredients, packaging materials and equipment to its franchisees.
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Mieswest says it produces 60 to 100% of its ingredients in-house
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and it also has a huge procurement network buying from 38 countries
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and that allows it to source things like lemons and milk powders at rates that are lower than rivals.
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It also has its own delivery and warehouse system.
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So all this supply chain model has really allowed the company to drive down costs and also to keep profit margins healthy.
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Great bubble tea starts with great tea.
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We have built this dedicated tea plantation in Vietnam, and that way we control end-to-end supply chain.
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That helps us work with our suppliers to leverage that scale to ensure our commodity costs can be low.
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In some cases, we've had those savings and able to pass it on to our franchise partners.
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So integration is important.
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We try not to own anything because we have a capital light model.
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But at the same time, our supply partners are really on the front foot to ensure that as we enter new markets, they have the capacity to deliver the volume
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and they've figured out a way to get it to market as low cost as possible without compromising quality.
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While franchising builds reach, virality and taste build obsession.
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It's not just tea, right?
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It's your tea and you can customise everything from sweetness levels on a sliding scale, 20%, 70%.
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You can choose how much ice you have and you can choose your toppings and your tea base as well.
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Bubble tea has seen many localised or regional flavours infused into different markets.
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We've got matcha in Japan, taro in Taiwan, palm sugar in Malaysia, even durian flavours in Singapore.
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So these are all different possibilities.
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90% of our menu is global.
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We're just launching a watermelon in Korea.
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And if it works there, we'll prove the business case and then actually can roll it to other markets.
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That seems to be how we tend to innovate.
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Prove it in a market, see what kind of consumer demand is, making sure it's profitable when we roll it out around the world.
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Search the bubble tea hashtag on Instagram and you'll find more than 4 million posts.
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This has helped the drink's popularity to surge globally.
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This store is very famous.
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I want to try this bubble tea.
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I like it so much because it's very yummy.
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It's only $15.
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I think the price is really great.
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Mishue's viral mascot and jingle drove brand engagement without using pricey ads.
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Taking a different approach, Haiti and Naishue leaned into limited edition drops.
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luxury packaging, and branded collaborations.
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Brands are constantly innovating how they connect with customers, with loyalty programs, delivery-only stores, and even robotic tea makers.
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So how long can the sugar rush last?
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While stores are opening up, they're also closing down.
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According to Chinese state media securities Times, Mi Xue, Auntie Jenny, Gu Ming,
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and Cha Penda saw a store closure rate of between 4.2% and 11.4% in 2024.
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With more chains flooding the market and menus starting to look the same, some chains have shuttered stores due to overexpansion,
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intense price wars and stiff competition.
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Real estate's a big drag on a business like ours and so is labour.
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I think it's moving away from larger footprint, experiential stores that are heavy on rent, heavy on labour, to more stores that are in the way, on the way.
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How we never get competitors, always a good thing and our new technology can deliver beverages at pace.
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The next frontier may not be another storefront.
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It could be premiumisation, health innovation or even AI-powered tea shops.
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The only question now is who'll survive the next wave?
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Whether that's robotic technology that might help us, whether that's a low labour model that'll ensure maximum profitability, we're already getting there.
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Key trends like energy or inclusions that are good for you, functional benefits, better for UT and having fun.
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I think those things will be at the forefront of innovation.
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That's the category of the future.

Sobre Esta Aula

Nesta aula, você irá praticar a escuta e a repetição de frases e expressões relacionadas ao crescimento explosivo das cadeias de bubble tea na China. A partir do conteúdo de um vídeo informativo, você terá a chance de melhorar a sua pronúncia em inglês, reconhecendo o ritmo e entonação utilizados pelos falantes nativos. Esta prática é ideal para quem deseja dominar o speaking e a pronúncia adequada em inglês, utilizando técnicas de shadow speech e shadowing para assimilar melhor o conteúdo.

Vocabulário e Frases-Chave

  • Bubble tea - Bebida de chá com pérolas de tapioca que se tornou popular
  • IPO (Oferta Pública Inicial) - Processo pelo qual uma empresa se torna pública e disponibiliza suas ações ao público
  • Margem de lucro - Diferença entre o custo de produção e o preço de venda
  • Cadeia de lojas - Um grupo de lojas que pertencem à mesma empresa ou marca
  • Cultura do café - A apreciação e o consumo de café como parte da sociedade
  • Franquia - Modelo de negócios onde uma empresa permite o uso de sua marca e operações a outras
  • Mercado em crescimento - Setor que está se expandindo rapidamente e atraindo investimentos
  • Competições de consumo - Empresas que lutam para conquistar a fidelidade dos clientes

Dicas de Prática

Para maximizar sua experiência de aprendizado, tente as seguintes técnicas enquanto assiste ao vídeo:

  • Shadowing: Ouça uma frase e pause o vídeo. Tente repetir a frase em voz alta, imitando o tom e ritmo do orador.
  • Foco na entonação: Preste atenção na maneira como as inflexões mudam dependendo da emoção transmitida. Isso ajudará você a entender melhor como utilizar a pronúncia correta em conversas.
  • Repetição em voz alta: Depois de repetir uma fraze, grave a si mesmo e compare com o áudio original. Isso ajudará a melhorar a pronúncia em inglês.
  • Pratique a velocidade: O vídeo pode ser rápido, então ajuste a velocidade de reprodução se necessário. Tente acompanhá-lo tanto na velocidade normal quanto em uma velocidade mais lenta para captar melhor as nuances.
  • Use o shadowspeaks: Combine suas práticas de shadowing com exercícios de conversação, utilizando o vocabulário aprendido.

O que é a Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing é uma técnica de aprendizado de idiomas com base científica, originalmente desenvolvida para o treinamento de intérpretes profissionais. O método é simples, mas poderoso: você ouve áudio em inglês nativo e repete imediatamente em voz alta — como uma sombra seguindo o falante com 1-2 segundos de atraso. Pesquisas mostram melhora significativa na precisão da pronúncia, entonação, ritmo, sons conectados, compreensão auditiva e fluência na fala.