The proliferation of bubble tea shops displacing Chinatown’s legacy businesses might not “look” like gentrification. That makes it even more insidious, some say.
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In August, as Grace Young walked down Doyers Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown, she was “stunned” to see that Ting’s Gift Shop, a charming gift shop that operated there for nearly 70 years, had disappeared.
“In its place, yet another bubble tea chain — probably the tenth to open in Chinatown this year,” Young, a Chinese American food anthropologist and celebrated cookbook author, wrote on Instagram afterward. “At this rate, will Chinatown become Bubble Tea Town?”
Boba, the sugary tapioca tea beverage originally from Taiwan, has been popular in American Chinatowns for well over a decade. But in the last two years its presence in Manhattan’s Chinatown has proliferated dramatically.
Today, there are more than 30 standalone boba shops in the neighborhood’s two-mile radius, each an average of 230 feet from the next — less than the length of a typical city block.
At least 15 of these appeared between now and the beginning of 2024, more than the number that began operations in the 10-year period between 2013 and 2023. They’ve supplanted a variety of businesses: houseware shops, Chinese dry goods stores, pharmacies, salons.
This boom is unfolding amid widespread small-business closures and a residential population that has become less working-class and less Asian. And while most of the new boba shops are a part of multinational chains based in Asia, mostly staffed and often frequented by Asian Americans, few have connected the trend to commercial gentrification or how this “bobafication” is reshaping Chinatown’s streets, economy and rhythms of life.
Young’s question has real implications, and it sheds light on how ethnicity and food can camouflage gentrification taking place in immigrant enclaves. As a citywide affordability crisis deepens, the bubble tea boom reflects a broader struggle over who the neighborhood’s future is being built for.
A legacy business becomes a boba shop
Run by three generations of Ting women, Ting’s Gift Shop sold handmade porcelain, silk garments and whimsical toys behind a rustic red storefront with a lived-in history of its own.
Any physical trace of that today is gone. In the summer of 2024, the Tings closed up shop. This past summer, 18 Doyers Street became the newest TEAPULSE, a Shanghai-based boba chain with over 3,000 locations. Questions of Ting’s economic viability played a major role in the decision to shutter, especially in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, which kept the shop closed for six months.
Read more: Can Chinatown’s Unique Food Ecosystem Last Another Generation?
It’s a common narrative among Chinatown small businesses that closed in the years following the pandemic.
Many were accustomed to operating on razor-thin economic margins, and struggled to catch up once business resumed, especially amid record levels of inflation and the city’s rising rents. Largely run by immigrants — whose businesses often didn’t even have a website — many also couldn’t lean on digital marketing to draw in customers, unlike the boba chains that have succeeded them.
In contrast to Ting’s lived-in charm and emphasis on cultural history, TEAPULSE is sleek and modern. Customers queue behind stanchions and order drinks, which cost as much as $9, on kiosk screens. Limited-edition items and eye-catching promotions are advertised throughout. Under its awning, a billboard of a model holding a cup of boba reads, “Free Phone Pouch with Any 2 Drinks.”
“Legacy shops tell the story of immigration and our history. Boba shops carry nothing.”
Behind the counter, a teenaged employee assembles ingredients and places a branded cup in a machine. A few seconds of automation later, the drink is ready to be Instagrammed and consumed.
If Ting’s had encouraged quiet contemplation and an appreciation for Chinese history and crafts, TEAPULSE does the opposite. Like most new boba shops, there’s little seating, so customers seldom linger.
“Legacy shops tell the story of immigration and our history,” says Young, who’s received the Julia Child Award and James Beard Foundation Award. “Boba shops carry nothing.”
Chinatown’s bobafication embodies a well-trodden story about large chains overtaking small businesses, something that’s taken place across New York City. In other neighborhoods, we’ve seen this through the proliferation of Starbucks, T.J.Maxx, Target and big banks.
The stakes with boba in Chinatown are distinct. It means a dilution of the neighborhood’s enclave economy, a reduction of essential businesses for residents, and a loss of gastronomic traditions in exchange for fast food culture and empty calories.
Boba shops in Manhattan’s Chinatown are able to survive amid an economy hostile to small businesses precisely because of these stakes. Their stripped down operations costs, high customer turnover and corporate structure allow for cushioning and financial resilience that mom-and-pop shops lack.
The high price of boba also helps. While being inexpensive to produce, a standard sized cup of boba in Manhattan’s Chinatown costs $8.30 on average — pricey for a non-alcoholic beverage. And unlike dim sum restaurants that require a bevy of perishable ingredients bought daily, skilled cooks, waitstaff and valuable time to prepare complex dishes, boba businesses circumvent this.
As a result, they yield high profit margins and those reserves can, in turn, go toward things like digital marketing or expanding a franchise. TEAPULSE’s second Chinatown location — just blocks from Doyers Street — opened last month.
Who is boba for?
Given the high price and sugar content of boba, the typical clientele are not the working-class residents characteristic of Chinatown’s residential community. They’re usually tourists or young people. Depending on who you ask, that spells trouble or opportunity.
Some business owners feel that catering to tourists is the only path for Chinatown’s economic survival. Derek Fang, a longtime employee at Ten Ren’s Tea Time, says — with some resignation — that he feels Manhattan’s Chinatown is for tourists at this point. For tourists, he says, mom-and-pop shops don’t offer sufficient novelty.
“Most locals don’t come to Chinatown anymore,” Fang says. “They shop in Queens and Brooklyn.”
That novelty is difficult to maintain. Frank Huang, the franchise owner at Bayard Street’s Be Fine Cha says that larger players in boba — chains like HeyTea and Molly Tea — have expanded business operations in the U.S. in recent years because markets in China were so oversaturated.
“It’s very hard for local shops to survive these days because the competition is too big,” Huang says. “For those big brands, they can release new drinks every two weeks.”
It’s no surprise, then, that young people — drawn by these marketing cycles — are the other contingent of boba drinkers. For them, boba offers an opportunity to socialize and is also a lifestyle item. The sugar and endless customizable toppings sweeten the deal, too.
“I think for most older people, boba is an extravagance,” Young says. “Especially for traditional Chinese people — for old timers — food is medicine, and as far as I can tell, there are no health attributes to boba tea.”
For Chinatown residents, bobafication means a neighborhood with a lot of one novelty good that doesn’t serve them and fewer access to meaningful necessities. But it’s bad for tourists, too.
Visitors have always come to Manhattan’s Chinatown for a taste of Chinese American cuisine and culture, but as it’s become less culturally rooted and more bobafied, the engagement with culture, ethnicity and space changes.
When visitors come to Chinatown and see a neighborhood lined with boba shops, this risks being the takeaway about Chinese and Chinese American culture. As a result, they lose out on opportunities to learn about regional gastronomic traditions and the stories behind family-owned storefronts — they scarcely get to learn about tea.
Concerns surrounding bobafication have long been a topic of discussion in Alice Liu’s family.
Her father founded Grand Tea & Imports, a small-batch tea shop that has brought high-quality Chinese teas to New York for nearly 20 years. Mr. Liu’s mission in opening the shop was to share a point of cultural pride and prestige with New Yorkers. He felt this was missing from the tea culture in Chinatown, where most establishments were serving pre-made, batched tea. Sharing fine teas, he felt, was a way to grow appreciation and respect for Chinese traditions and people.
“The facet of Chinese people that most Americans interact with is through Chinatown,” says younger Liu, who serves as the community outreach and production lead at the local nonprofit organization ThinkChinatown. “We had poorly misrepresented tea, which he thought was a huge misrepresentation of our culture and even our values.”
Beyond boba
Not everyone is sounding the alarm about boba. Wellington Chan, co-chair of the Chinatown Business Improvement District, feels that change is inevitable. If the choice is between boba and losing Chinatown altogether, he says, the former trumps the latter.
“This is a free market, so at the end of the day, there’s a term called oversaturation,” Chan says. “So the market will even out.”
So far, though, the number of boba shops has only continued to grow.
“I think what’s happening with boba is much subtler and in some ways more insidious because it looks like an Asian phenomenon,” Young says. “It’s rooted in Taiwanese tea culture — it’s started by Asians, loved by Asians. On the surface, it looks like the ultimate Asian success story, but it still functions as an agent of gentrification.”
“It’s started by Asians, loved by Asians. On the surface, it looks like the ultimate Asian success story, but it still functions as an agent of gentrification.”
Unlike a Starbucks or T.J. Maxx, boba is better equipped to hide the economic reality afflicting residents and businesses in Manhattan’s Chinatown because it doesn’t feel like ethnic displacement.
But in doing so, it suppresses important conversations about everything from the neighborhood’s speculative real estate market, gentrification from within the Asian community, and solutions that balance the needs of tourists and locals.
Liu feels that these solutions need to combine economic policies — such as commercial rent control and tax breaks for small businesses — and cultural outreach. That means helping existing businesses make websites or get on Instagram, as well as promoting cultural products to young people beyond boba.
It also means encouraging people to patronize small businesses and legacy shops in Chinatown, as Young has dedicated much of her career toward.
“I’m constantly trying to remind people that Chinatown is such a special community and that there are so many unique stores and shops,” Young says. “It’s the diversity and the rich culture that Chinatown offers that makes the city what it is.”
This story has been updated to clarify the timeline of Ting’s closure.
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Viviane Eng is a writer from New York City. She lives in Brooklyn and covers the intersections of culture, political economy and space.