At Heytea in the Natick Mall, lines are consistently out the door. Dozens of mobile orders appear on the counter as people swoop into the store, grab their drinks, take a picture for social media, and walk away, all in under a minute.
They’re sipping electric-colored beverages like the Crisp Grape Boom, a towering purple wonder made with crushed grapes and jasmine tea, or the Kale Boost Tea, served in a jar with pressed kale and chia seeds.
Put down your Dunkin’ dirty soda. The matcha and bubble tea renaissance has arrived in Massachusetts.
Heytea, a drink shop known for luxury, trendy, and aesthetically pleasing beverages, is the first of several large-scale Chinese-based drink chains to open a notable series of stores in the state. It’s not the only Chinese tea shop to set its sights here. Molly Tea, which opened its doors last December in Boston’s Chinatown to a warm welcome from Mayor Michelle Wu, is planning a new location in Allston. And Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, which at more than 49,000 stores worldwide is the largest restaurant chain in the world, is preparing to franchise in Massachusetts.
If you haven’t noticed these popular shops yet, buckle up.
The Heytea expansion in Massachusetts represents a mere sliver of the company’s larger US ambitions. With nearly 4,000 locations in China, Heytea has opened 15 locations in New York City alone since debuting there in late 2023. It’s in at least seven other states now.
Heytea opened its first Bay State location in Allston in January 2025, its second on Newbury Street in June 2025, and its third in February in Natick. Now, Heytea has locations set to open in Chinatown and Malden, which would bring the statewide total to five in under two years.
The company did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the openings, but according to an employee, Chinatown Heytea workers are currently being trained at the Natick Mall location. In Malden, “they are currently performing final inspections for the permitted work, which would be consistent with a property that is close to being opened for business,” Nelson L. Miller Jr., the town’s director of international services, told the Globe in an email.
Heytea has grown rapidly since it started in Jiangmen, a city in southern China, in 2012. Its appeal is a minimalistic branding style and a vast menu of beverage options, from standards like matcha lattes and brown sugar boba milk tea to unique offerings like Coconut Mango Blue, a fresh mango slushie blended with coconut milk. Heytea recently released a World Cup-inspired beverage called Not A Margarita, one of many drinks on the rotating menu to keep customers engaged.
Founder and chief executive Nie Yunchen is also credited with popularizing “cheese tea,” a drink with a foam-like, lightly salty whipped cream cheese topping designed to counter the bitterness of tea. The topping’s name has turned some people away, so Heytea now markets the topping as a “cheese cloud” or “cloud” for short, less off-putting for Western consumers. Most drinks at Heytea have the option to add a cloud on top; there are also other foam flavors, such as pistachio.
Heytea falls at the luxury end of mass-market tea: The Triple Supreme Matcha Latte will run you $8.55 after tax on Newbury Street, meaningfully more expensive than a Starbucks venti matcha latte, which comes to $6.37 after tax in Boston. A large (650ml) Cloud Crisp Grape costs $9.99 before tax.
Unlike local boba or matcha shops, which have been commonplace around Boston for years, chains like Heytea have constantly changing menus that focus on chasing the next trend, with a stream of unique, specialized beverages released for a limited time. After Yunchen pioneered cheese tea, it was quickly copied by his competitors, but soon he was on to the next fad.
Other Chinese tea chains are proliferating throughout the country. Mixue, which counts more stores than McDonald’s around the world, opened its first US store in Los Angeles in December. Notably, the drink giant is accepting franchise applications for three states: New York, California, and Massachusetts.
Luckin Coffee, which has more than 26,000 stores globally, opened its first store in New York in June 2025. The number of digits in the store’s internal label, “NO.US00001,″ would seem to imply designs on a larger US expansion. The website now lists 16 locations in New York. Luckin’s model is based strictly on mobile orders, with no interaction with the employees.
Molly Tea, another luxury-focused tea brand based in Shenzhen, China, that claims to specialize in “floral-scented Chinese teas,” has 1,400 stores in China and 2,000 globally. After opening in Boston’s Chinatown last year, Molly Tea is set to join Novo Marketplace in Allston, which opened its doors in May.
These mega-chains are not all alike. While Heytea and Molly Tea offer higher prices and highly stylized branding, perfect for social media posting, Luckin Coffee and Mixue market themselves as budget-friendly alternatives to the likes of Starbucks or Dunkin’. Luckin Coffee’s prices match those at Starbucks, but Luckin offers mobile app users constant discounts and BOGO deals. Mixue sells many drinks under $5, with the signature soft serve cone less than $2. The success of Heytea and Molly Tea’s Massachusetts gambit could pave the way for the larger Mixue and Luckin brands to make their debut here.
Still, in Massachusetts, any drink company has a lot of work to do before it can knock on the door of New England’s own Dunkin’.
Sam Shipman can be reached at sam.shipman@globe.com.