You properly heard of the popular drink trend with a base of tea and tapioca pearls/boba called bubble tea. Bubble tea was created in the 1980s  by the Taiwanese and is highly beloved in their country. Studies say that the bubble tea industry grew to almost 2 billion $ and  almost $4.3 billion in 5 years . South East Asia has recorded that bubble tea increased to 3,000% alone.  

The Origin of Bubble tea 

After Chang Fan Shu finished working as a Mixologist at Taiwan Izakaya under the Japanese, during WWII (1949). Chang opened a tea shop that sells unique hand-shaken tea with cocktail shakers. As a result a riched, slicky ice tea with air bubbles. Present days, This drink was a marvelous experience at the time. Cold drinks at the time were not back then, but the idea of digesting food and drinks only began to grow in post-war Taiwan. 

“This tea trend arrived with the rising trend of leisure food in the 1980s and since, Taiwan is experiencing rapid growth,” according to Tseng Pin Tsang. 

In 1986, the Taiwan Tu Tsong, an artist and entrepreneur, figured he was going to start a business on the tea trend.  “I was visiting the wet market Tainan, when I saw the tapioca pearls [fenyuan]. It was a traditional snack I loved when I was a kid,” recalls Tu. 

Tu thought ‘why don’t I put my tapioca pearls into my green tea.’ The tapioca pearls look very translucent with a white center inside my green tea.  Then Tu started experimenting by adding different sizes of tapioca balls to milk tea for a richer taste and chewy texture. That milk tea became the classic bubble tea that most fans adore and know about today. Tu opened his first shop in October 1986. Now Hanlin controls 80 branches across Taiwan. And has different franchises across the world from the United States and Canada to mainland China.

But this is where it gets confusing Tu wasn't the only person claiming to create bubble tea. Lin Hsiu Hui, a product manager at bubble tea chain Chun Shui Tang, says she created the very first glass of bubble milk tea at a staff meeting in 1988. And just for fun, she poured tapioca pearls into her assam tea and took a sip. During an interview, Lin told CNN travel that everyone at the meeting loved the drink and it quickly took over all of the other iced teas. Within a couple of months. The staff of Chun Shui Tang also claims that the brand was the first to create the foam tea shaken up with a cocktail shaker. And over years, the fight  escalated. And over a decade later the litigation kicked in 2009. But the fight for ownership finally resolved 10 years later with no winner. 

Bubble teas creativity 

Bubble tea has been developing for decades. Recent days, bubble tea is still evolving its taste and texture. One of my personal favorites is brown sugar bubble tea. It's made with natural brown sugar and fresh milk instead of something you would normally put in tea like a cremer or plain sugar. The fast expanding stores like Tiger sugar, Youiccha and  Xing Fu Tang have spread the trend to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan, and other countries. Bubble tea would now take a few hours. For example, the workers cooking and reheating bubble tea have to replace the boba every 3 hours to retain each batch’s freshness. The Traditional bubble tea has also joined the creative concept in their menus for intense, they use the word “latte” to suggest milk tea to customers. Bubbleology has been planning to introduce the new “skinny tea” to the product line. Skinny tea is made with reduced sugar and organic soya milk. Khan says “We are trying to appeal to modern audiences with skinny tea to encourage  wellness  and health. No matter how weird you get with the recipe. The heart of the drink should be the tea.