Bubble Tea Menus: Designing for Variety and Appeal

A shop menu is one of the most important factors in consumer decision making, and is therefore crucial in winning business for your bubble tea store. Making sure that you have an up to date menu, with new and popular bubble tea flavours, is absolutely vital. Every new bubble tea idea that you have can help your menu appeal to different customers! Additionally, ensuring that your menu stands out visually and catches the attention of passersby is another way to draw in interest and beat the competition. This blog will discuss the important considerations for designing both the contents and the visual aspects of your bubble tea store menu.

 

Introducing your Base Tea Leaves

Before you can order ingredients and equipment, you need a clear idea of what you plan to offer on your menu, as this affects what items you do and do not need. Therefore, creating your menu is one of the first and most important steps in the process of opening a bubble tea store. To start, you must decide which teas you are going to offer. Commonly, bubble tea stores will offer both classic milk teas, as well as fruit tea options. This requires you to brew both Black Assam and Green tea, as well as provide flavour and topping options for the two differing styles of tea. Some stores even offer additional teas, such as Oolong and Earl Grey. Whilst offering both black and green tea is strongly recommended, some smaller shops will only offer one or the other, and success can still be found in doing this.

 

Creating Diverse Bubble Tea Flavours with Syrups

The next decision is how many flavours of each tea to offer. Luckily, the difference between a strawberry and mango fruit tea, for example, is very minimal, and essentially comes down to pumping a different flavoured syrup into either drink. The same goes for milk tea, where flavour powders are the one key difference between different milk tea options. This means that it is manageable and easy to offer a large variety of flavours in your store, and the only necessity is counter space for the powders and syrups to be placed. 

 

Adding Bubbles to the Tea

Once you have decided on your choices of flavours, the last thing to decide is which toppings to offer. Tapioca is a necessity for any bubble tea store selling milk teas, whilst coconut jellies, red beans and taro are other great options. As for fruit teas, you will need a selection of popping boba for your customers to customise their drinks with. Toppings are often placed at the service counter, in the view of the customers, helping them to choose and design their drinks. They do not take up too much space and almost all toppings are ready to use straight from the tub.

The key decision to be made with regards to toppings is whether to cook your own tapioca, or opt for a quick cook alternative. Cooking your own tapioca is the optimal choice, as it ensures a product with a greater taste and texture. This is also a more authentic choice and will help you to win and retain the business of hardcore bubble tea fans. However, a smaller or busier store may opt for instant tapioca, which comes pre-portioned and can be microwaved ready for usage in under a minute. Doing this removes the need for equipment, time and space to cook tapioca. Whichever you choose, once the lineup of toppings is decided, your menu is almost ready!

 

The Importance of a Visually Appealing Menu

The last step from here is to design the visuals for the menu. A good way to design menus is to lead with high quality product imagery, so customers can clearly see the drink before they order. You want to draw attention to the menu, even from outside your store, and point customers in the direction of the most delicious offerings. Additionally, it must be easy to read and understand, as confusing menus may discourage customers from placing an order.

If you need some inspiration, a great place to start for growing your creative ideas is Pinterest where you can browse and get inspired by others, while platforms like Canva are an excellent way to easily produce high quality menus with thousands of different ready to use templates available, just search ‘bubble tea menu design’.