Cult Taiwanese Tea Shop Opens One Site, Teases Another

Yi Fang, the cult Taiwanese tea shop, has opened one London site with another to follow.

Having spent time at Spitalfields market as a pop-up, the brand has opened a kiosk on Shaftesbury Avenue and will be opening another on Moor Street in Soho this summer. Yi Fang’s USP is its range of proprietary ingredients, grown on farms that the company owns in Taiwan. Clearly attuned to London’s increasing appetite for the sometimes delicious and Instagrammable boba tea (or bubble tea), the company has added the two sites in the capital to its portfolio of 600 worldwide. Not bad for a company that launched in 2016.

Yi Fang was fined in 2017 after Taipei’s Department of Health found unsafe levels of bacteria in its green tea, and for a company of its stature the lack of available information about its fruit farms could cause some concern over the ethics of their supply chain. Nonetheless, London has already taken to the bubble tea offering, and plans for a second store seem a safe bet.

Pokai Wang of Yi Fang told Eater:

We are excited to open our first permanent location in the UK. Chinatown London offers the very best of Chinese food and drink in London, which made it the obvious choice for the beginning of our brand’s expansion.

While we are extremely well known in Taiwan we hope to introduce the Taiwanese tradition of drinking tea and the culture of our country to the UK. We take great pride in serving the very best product to our customers and look forward to adding to London’s existing market of diverse experiences from around the globe.

More soon.