There are two playbooks. One starts in Chinatown and hopes to cross over. The other walks straight into the mainstream. The choice reveals how a brand sees itself and sets a ceiling on day one.
For decades, the default playbook for Asian beverage brands entering the US started in the same places: Flushing. Chinatown. The San Gabriel Valley. Build a diaspora base, prove demand, then try to cross over. The entire Taiwanese boba wave (Gong Cha, ShareTea, Kung Fu Tea, CoCo) grew this way.
And new Chinese brands are still doing it. In 2024, Molly Tea opened its first US store in Flushing, Queens. Auntea Jenny did the same. Their marketing manager said it plainly: "We chose Chinatown's location to use Chinatown as a gateway."
Flushing, Chinatown, SGV
Built-in customer base
Ceiling set on day one
Molly Tea · Auntea Jenny · Gong Cha · CoCo
Premium malls, high-traffic hubs
Category-defining, not category-joining
No ceiling
Heytea · Luckin · Chagee
The pattern is clean: smaller brands start in diaspora neighborhoods. The biggest, best-capitalized brands go straight to mainstream. But even among the front-door brands, one made a choice that stands apart.
Heytea and Luckin went to Manhattan. Chagee went to Century City.
霸王茶姬 · NASDAQ: CHA · Founded 2017, Kunming, Yunnan[1]
Zhang Junjie was orphaned at 10. Homeless for seven years. Couldn't read until 18. He taught himself while working 12-hour shifts at a milk tea shop in Kunming.[1]
By 24, he'd founded his own brand. By 32, he'd taken it public on the NASDAQ with a $5.1 billion valuation.[1][2]
Zhang's stated model: Starbucks. A global lifestyle brand built on one core product, operational consistency, and a "third space" experience. He wanted to be bigger than boba.
The Chinese media called it the "Oriental Starbucks." He encouraged the comparison.[1]
Multiple reports of heart palpitations and ER visits. A large cup contains around 184mg caffeine.[8]
Widely negative sentiment. Legal threats against critics backfire badly.[8]
"Fresh milk" claims challenged when testing reportedly found approximately 19% real milk content, with emulsifiers and thickeners making up the balance.[8]
China's territorial claims appear in Vietnam/Malaysia app. Boycott calls. Vietnam entry delayed indefinitely.[8]
14% stock drop in a single day.[8][9]
Employee filmed herself stirring tea barehanded. Trending #1 on Weibo. Store closed. Employee fired.[8]
Stock down 58% from IPO.[2] Same-store sales cratering 20%+.[7] JP Morgan initiates with a Sell rating.[9] The "Oriental Starbucks" narrative is in freefall.
And this is when they decided to enter the United States.
Westfield Century City. Between Gucci and Louis Vuitton. 5,000+ cups served on opening day.[11]
Heytea went to Times Square. High foot traffic, tourist-heavy, volume play. Luckin went to Greenwich Village. Student-adjacent, value-priced, convenience play. Chagee went to a luxury mall in West LA. The address is the positioning.
Century City draws entertainment executives, tourists, affluent West LA. The address positions Chagee against Starbucks Reserve, not against the $4 boba shop down the street.
They excluded tapioca pearls entirely. Refusing the most recognizable Asian tea signifier forces customers to judge the product on its own terms.
Positioned against Starbucks lattes, above the $4 boba shops. The price declares the category.
A fashion-adjacent mainstream cultural figure. The signal: we belong in your world, and we brought someone you already recognize.
A high-end Santa Monica institution. Jasmine tea-infused cruffins. Local culinary credibility, integrated rather than imported.
A Grammy-winning musician. Half Icelandic, half Chinese, fully mainstream. The smartest signal, and the one that hasn't fully broken through yet.
Half Icelandic, half Chinese. Classical training from a family of conservatory musicians. A Grammy winner at 24 for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. Over 40 million Spotify listeners as of late 2025. The most-streamed Icelandic artist in history, surpassing Björk.[12]
Laufey appears niche. Jazz, cello, orchestral arrangements. But her audience is massive and mainstream. She makes vintage feel fresh for people born after 2000.
Chagee appears niche. Chinese tea, cultural heritage, traditional aesthetics. But it operates like Starbucks with 8-second automated service and 7,300 stores.
Both are mainstream operations dressed in niche aesthetics.
Laufey gets discovered for the aesthetic: the vintage look, the orchestral arrangements, the cool factor. She gets kept for the music. It actually works on repeat.
The question for Chagee is whether the same trick works in reverse: can a brand that gets discovered for luxury packaging keep you coming back for the tea?
WHICH DOOR EACH BRAND CHOSE · AND WHAT IT TELLS YOU
| Brand | First US Location | US Stores | US Price Range | Playbook |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Chagee
霸王茶姬
|
Westfield Century City, LA
May 2025 · Premium mall
|
7+ | $5.95 - $7.75 | Front Door |
|
Heytea
喜茶
|
Broadway, Midtown Manhattan
Dec 2023 · Tourist hub
|
35+ | $4 - $7.50 | Front Door |
|
Luckin Coffee
瑞幸咖啡
|
Greenwich Village + NoMad, NYC
June 2025 · Urban hubs
|
9 | $2 - $5 | Front Door |
|
Molly Tea
茉莉奶白
|
Flushing, Queens
2024 · Chinatown gateway
|
5+ | $5 - $8 | Side Door |
|
Auntea Jenny
沪上阿姨
|
Flushing, Queens
2024 · Diaspora base
|
3+ | $5 - $7 | Side Door |
|
Gong Cha
貢茶
|
Flushing, Queens
2014 · Taiwanese franchise wave
|
240+ | $5 - $7 | Side Door |
|
Mixue
蜜雪冰城
|
Koreatown, NYC
2025 · Asian-adjacent
|
3+ | $1 - $4 | Side Door |
The front-door brands share a common trait: heavy capitalization and a stated ambition to compete at the category level, well above the ethnic niche. Chagee's distinction is the specific door it chose. Where Heytea and Luckin picked high-traffic Manhattan, Chagee picked a lifestyle-coded luxury mall in West LA.[10][11]
Time Out LA called it mediocre.[14] The Infatuation compared it unfavorably to Starbucks.[15] The Daily Bruin was more generous.[16] The strategy was brilliant. The product reception was mixed.
Stock down 58%. Same-store sales collapsing. The critics are not impressed. But the playbook, choosing the front door, choosing the right front door, is the most interesting thing a Chinese brand has attempted in the US market in years.
The side door still works for building a regional franchise. Gong Cha has 240 US stores to prove it. But for Chinese beverage brands whose ambition is to compete at the category level, to be the Starbucks of tea rather than the ethnic option, category positioning in the US market is set on day one. Chagee got that right.
But the front door gets you into a room. It doesn't furnish it. "Premium brewed Chinese tea" is a category American consumers don't recognize. There is no mental slot for it. Coffee has one. Boba has one. Even matcha has one. Chagee isn't just entering a market. They're trying to build one that doesn't exist yet.
The Dior-esque cup gets people in line on Saturday. The question is what gets them back on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and the week after that. Right now, nobody has answered that question, including Chagee.