If you haven’t heard of bubble tea, you aren’t alone. But Assad Khan, 35, would like to make sure that you hear about it..and soon. This brightly colored drink has tapioca “pearls” inside of it. In Asia, the tea is a hit, with over 100,000 outlets that stoke this concoction. At the moment, in America, there are only 3000 that have it.
Khan opened his first shop in the UK in 2011 in Soho, central London. And his company, Bubbleology, has a £2million annual turnover.
Bubble tea comes from Taiwan where it was invented in the early 1980s. At Bubbleology, they use a base of green tea, black/red tea or white tea and have natural fruit flavorings. They also have milk teas.
Now, Khan is hoping to spread this love to the States. As he said, “It is drunk all over the world, but there is no global leader. Where is the Starbucks?”
At the moment he has 70 staff at outlets around England, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Russia, Switzerland and Kuwait. As he said, “We are doing a big push in the US. There are just 3,000 outlets that stock it in the US, but 100,000 in Asia. Bubble tea is big.”