The bubble tea trend has stayed surprisingly resilient all these years, even with so many food fads coming in and dying faster than you can say, “salted egg yolk potato chips”. But one popular bubble tea franchise that made its mark here when it opened in 2009 is taking its leave, but not because it hasn’t been doing well. In its place, a new home-brand bubble tea chain named LiHo, which is Hokkien for “how are you?”, will be introduced with a bunch of new creations, including their signature cheese tea.
General Manager of RTG Holdings and Gong Cha franchisee Rodney Tang shut down all 80 of the outlets because he felt betrayed by his partners from the parent company in Taiwan. According to a report, Tang said that they had sold the company to a Japanese company without formally letting him know. But that also brought about a new window of opportunity. Instead of shutting down completely, RTG decided to build an entirely new bubble tea brand from scratch, with plans to replace all 80 Gong Cha outlets with LiHo by Jun 5.
A new logo, fresh interiors, different packaging and a completely revamped menu—that’s what you can expect when you head down to any of the outlets. For its offerings, they’ll be going to different suppliers for its tea and other raw ingredients (even their methods of making the drinks will be different). But rest assured, Tang promises LiHo will brew teas of similar, if not better, quality. Adding on the usual milk teas and hand-brewed teas, LiHo will also see a selection of cheese teas, a first in Singapore, as well as smoothies and a series of teas using juices from fresh lemon.
We recently tried the cheese black tea ($4-5), which brought about polarizing opinions in our office (someone said it tastes like tea-flavored melted cheese). It’s definitely an acquired taste; you either love it or hate it. The LiHo Royal Milk Guan Yin ($3.50-4.50) on the other hand, was more favored with everyone.
