The short answer. A bubble tea franchise is still one of the cheapest ways to enter Southeast Asian food and beverage — a kiosk or small storefront, limited kitchen, fast payback when the site is right. But the easy phase has ended. More than 60 tea brands were operating over 6,100 outlets across the region by the close of 2024, and the largest Chinese chains have started closing and consolidating stores in Indonesia and Vietnam rather than adding them. In 2026 the money is no longer in being first — it is in site quality, supply chain control, and buying rights in the markets that are not yet saturated.
The scale of the build-out over the last five years is easy to underestimate. Mixue and Chagee alone grew their regional networks by roughly 80% between 2019 and 2024. Mixue is now the world’s largest food and beverage chain by store count — more than 45,000 outlets, ahead of McDonald’s (43,000-plus) and Starbucks (around 40,000) — with 41,584 stores in China and 4,895 across eleven overseas countries at the end of 2024.
Chagee, meanwhile, operates across eight countries on two continents, including Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore. In Indonesia it entered through a joint venture with a subsidiary of local retail group Erajaya and secured halal certification — a reminder that in this region distribution is won locally, not centrally.
The turn has already begun. Mixue’s 2025 interim report disclosed that it had started adjusting and streamlining outlets in Indonesia and Vietnam, with store counts in both markets falling in the first half of the year. Chinese tea groups have simultaneously begun pushing into South Korea and the United States, which is what operators do when their primary growth market gets tight.
Beverage formats span an unusually wide range, and the format you choose matters more than the brand you choose. Broad market ranges look like this:
| Format | Typical footprint | Indicative entry cost | Where it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mall kiosk / counter | 5 – 15 sqm | Low | High-footfall malls, transit hubs |
| Street-front takeaway | 20 – 40 sqm | Low to mid | Dense urban strips, university areas |
| Café-format tea house | 60 – 150 sqm | Mid to high | Premium brands competing with coffee |
| Master / country franchise | Network-level | High (fee + development commitment) | Operators building 30+ units |
Entry costs vary enormously by brand, city and landlord. Treat the table as a structural guide, not a quote — always work from the franchisor’s current disclosure document and a market-specific build estimate.
Beverage unit economics are deceptively simple and unforgiving in practice. Gross margins on tea are high, which tempts operators into weak sites on the assumption that margin covers everything. It does not. Rent as a percentage of revenue, daily cup count and staffing efficiency decide the outcome:
Three openings are still real in 2026.
Secondary and tertiary cities. The saturation story is largely a capital-city story. Provincial cities across Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines remain thinly served, with materially lower rent and less competitive intensity.
Premium and specialty positioning. The mass-market value segment is where the fighting is. Brands positioned on tea quality, single-origin sourcing or a genuine café experience compete against coffee rather than against Mixue — a different and less bloody battlefield. Chagee’s reported annual tea procurement of more than 10,000 tons shows how seriously the premium end now treats sourcing.
Distressed and conversion opportunities. When a network streamlines, well-located sites come free. Operators with capital and patience are increasingly acquiring existing stores or converting closed units rather than building new — usually the better risk-adjusted entry at this point in the cycle.
Investors frequently treat “beverage franchise” as one category. It is not. Coffee carries higher average tickets and longer dwell times but heavier equipment and barista training costs. Juice and health-forward formats — a growing segment across the Gulf and Southeast Asia — face shorter shelf life and cold-chain constraints. Tea sits between them: low equipment cost, high margin, fast service, but the weakest defensibility, because the barrier to a competitor opening across the street is minimal.
That is the central strategic point. In tea, your moat is your site and your operating discipline, not your recipe. Investors weighing the broader set should read our overview of Asian coffee, tea, juice and specialty F&B concepts alongside the wider restaurant franchise landscape across Asia.
For most serious investors, single-unit tea franchising no longer justifies the management attention it consumes. The economics only become interesting at scale, where central kitchen or warehousing, shared marketing and staffing depth start to pay. That argues for either a multi-unit development agreement in a defined city, or country-level franchise rights in a market that a brand has not yet entered.
The catch is that the obvious countries are gone. Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines are already covered by most of the large Chinese and Taiwanese chains. What remains available tends to be either smaller markets, or the rights to newer brands that have not yet proven themselves — which is a different risk profile entirely, and one worth pricing honestly. Structuring guidance for the region is covered in our Malaysia franchise guide.
Yes, at unit level, where the site is strong and rent is controlled — margins on tea remain high. What has changed is that a good brand no longer guarantees a good outcome. In saturated capital-city catchments, returns now depend far more on location quality and operating discipline than on brand selection.
Mixue leads globally on store count, with Chagee expanding rapidly across eight countries. Established players including Chatime, Gong Cha, CoCo Fresh Tea & Juice, The Alley and Tiger Sugar hold substantial regional networks.
It depends almost entirely on format. A mall kiosk is among the lowest-cost entries in franchised F&B; a full café-format tea house can cost several times more. Master franchise rights carry an upfront fee plus a contractual development schedule and are priced per market.
In major cities, largely yes. More than 60 brands ran over 6,100 outlets regionally by end-2024, and leading chains have begun reducing store counts in Indonesia and Vietnam. Secondary cities and premium positioning remain comparatively open.
Only with a clear view of which territories a brand has already awarded, realistic per-city unit potential, and a supply chain plan. The strongest cases now involve either an unentered market or a brand with genuine product differentiation — not simply another value-priced tea chain in a city that already has fifty.
Southeast Asia’s bubble tea boom created an enormous amount of value, and it also created an enormous amount of competition. The brands themselves have signalled the shift: the biggest operator in the world is now optimising its Indonesian and Vietnamese estates rather than expanding them, and its peers are looking at Korea, the United States and beyond. Investors entering now should assume they are buying into a mature category — pricing sites conservatively, insisting on supply chain clarity, and treating scale rather than novelty as the source of return.
Further reading: Nikkei Asia on Chinese milk tea chains pushing further afield, VnExpress International on regional crowding, and CBC News on Mixue’s scale.
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