A Chatime store in Mildura. Source: supplied.
Since launching in Australia in 2009, Chatime has dominated the Australian bubble tea industry, helping the drink become a mainstream product for western consumers. With 150 stores, a ready-made supermarket range, and a compound annual growth rate above the industry average, things will only get bigger for the Taiwanese franchise.
Chatime Australia’s CEO Carlos Antonius sat down with SmartCompany to share the company’s secret to success and its expansion plans.
When opening the first T-Brewery in Hurstville, Sydney, in 2009, Chatime Australia founders knew the franchise depended on consumers with an Asian background. This demographic was already familiar with the concept of bubble tea (or boba), and many already knew the Chatime brand from its Taiwanese origins. The growth strategy for the time was to simply capitalise on that market by selecting store locations that provided access to those consumers.
Fast forward to 2022, and Caucasian Australians are now Chatime’s biggest consumers. The brand has opened 31 new locations this year alone and is smashing the industry average compound annual growth rate of 7.2% by an extra 3.3%. So how did Chatime manage to crack into a new consumer demographic with such force?
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