“Bubble tea” or more popularly known these days as “boba”, continues to experience strong demand even after 40 years since its origin in Taiwan in the early ‘80s. How did this trend survive the test of time?

“Guys, I am starting a premium Boba business in Taiwan!” I remember hearing Ron Chan saying this back in 2021 and I went “Tell me more” as I was skeptical about how a new player entering the market of a very matured product can still garner a piece of the pie. Furthermore, ODD ONE OUT is charging a premium price for a cup of boba (head over to their website to find out what I mean by ‘premium price’). He then moved on to explain the brand, the products and the whole idea of handcrafting each and every cup of boba in the most sophisticated way; almost like a craftsmanship of sorts and that caught my attention. One thing led to another, ODD ONE OUT has its flagship outlet in Taiwan, 2 outlets in the United States and another coming soon!

In our recent LinkedIn post, we shared a bit about the product lifecycle of boba and how it has managed to revive itself again and again over the past 4 decades. Here in this article, I analyze the CVP (Customer Value Proposition) of the boba business and how it relates to any other business.

CVP of the Boba Consumers

We have published a blog post about business CVP and will dive right into that of a boba business. Essentially, it boils down to 3: Availability and accessibility, product assortment, and price.

1. Availability and Accessibility

This can be easily explained as the amount of presence a brand has, both online and more importantly, offline. A good gauge would be the number of retail outlets a brand has to build the TOMA (Top Of Mind Awareness). Walking around in shopping malls in Thailand, it is difficult to miss a KAMU shop because it is everywhere. KAMU also appears as 1 of the top 3 “Bubble Tea” or “Boba” search term results on food delivery platforms such as Foodpanda and GrabFood. As boba is not a staple or essential beverage for survival, it is often categorized as a “craving”. Understanding that cravings are often needed to be satisfied urgently, KAMU’s wide reach and availability enables them to be a winner in this game.

2. Product Assortment and Specialty

Depending on whether a brand is built for the masses or a particular segment, its product assortment will differ. Do note that there isn’t necessarily a strong co-relationship between a high accessibility and a large product assortment – a brand that is highly accessible can have less than 10 product variations while a brand that only has 3 outlets can have 36 items on its menu. However, a very diverse product catalog will have a higher chance of capturing a larger group of customers by giving them more options to choose from.

There are also boba brands that painstakingly create special drinks or flavours to appeal to consumers that want to experience boba (note that I used the word ‘experience’ instead of ‘consume’). Imagine walking into a boba outlet and the barista starts asking how you are feeling and your preferred taste profile before creating a unique cup of boba that stimulates all 5 senses of your bodily functions. After forging a relationship with the barista over the counter with a 1-hour conversation, the bill came up to $35. (By the way, this is called Bespoke Blending). Does it make sense to the common consumers? Maybe not, but there is a segment of consumers that is willing to pay for this experience. To understand whether your target audience is the right audience persona to be chased after for this highly-priced product, the next CVP will be of great relevance.

3. Price

“Boba Teashake”, the World’s Most Expensive Bubble Tea, a collaboration by TEALEAVES x The St. Regis San Francisco, debuted at the 2017 San Francisco Design Week.

This may seem like a no-brainer to many but it holds the highest level of complexity when it comes to deciding the CVP of a brand/business. Every consumer has a different price appetite – $2 for a cup of boba might be very cheap to someone but deemed as “low quality” by someone else. Some boba brands have also partnered with food delivery companies to offer free delivery or discounted orders by offering vouchers or promo codes. Here, the concept is simple – do you want to sell a lot of boba while earning a small margin on a per cup basis or would you prefer to sell a minimal number of boba at a much higher margin per cup sold? None of them are incorrect but we have to bear in mind that boba is not a staple or essential beverage for survival (Yes, I say this again) and will probably belong to the lower tier of the Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. How a brand/business continues to retain customers by having repeat orders will probably depend largely on how it prices its products/services.

Every business has different CVP

Businesses in the same category can have different CVP, the same goes to the prioritization of their respective CVP. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all rule around this topic. Avante Strategies has developed a systematic framework to uncover your business’ CVP and how to prioritize them.

Contact us for a complimentary 45 minutes chat to explore more.