Dessert Cup Runeth Over

The face of our retail strips is forever in a state of flux as consumer demands evolve with changing needs and tastes for goods and services. While half a century ago coffee shops were an obscure site in Melbourne, they have become an essential component of any retail mix. Now, a new kind of retail boom looks set to equal cafes in sheer volume in Glenferrie Hawthorn.

With increasing visibility, bubble tea and dessert shops - some combining both - have sprung up along Glenferrie Road, unmatched in number by any other business model. Although largely innocuous, what this saccharine wave means for our major trade routes prompts investigation. To put it another way, is Glenferrie Hawthorn likely to become yet another dessert row?

First invented in Taiwan in the 1980s, bubble tea (known in Taiwan as boba) is a sweetened drink made with flavoured tea, milk and chewy tapioca beans with different flavour combinations and toppings. In the decades since its invention, bubble tea's popularity has spread across Asia and the world. Bubble tea shops first appeared in Australia around the millennium. At first they tended to only open in areas with large Asian populations, but they have since expanded into virtually all urban and suburban shopping districts and even rural Australia.

According to travel and culture website, Urban Scrapbook, Springvale is presently the bubble tea capital of Australia with a total of ten shops on Buckingham Avenue alone. But Glenferrie Road is fast catching up with five shops dealing in bubble tea and around ten dedicated dessert shops - some also serving bubble tea. Some businesses like Cones Ice Cream & Gelato (836 Glenferrie Rd) and Yo-Chi (673 Glenferrie Rd) pre-date the current boom, which began around five years ago. Notably, many of of the more recent dessert businesses are franchises with some boasting shop numbers into the hundreds  Australia wide. 

The question of whether the wider local community has embraced this new retail boom is difficult to gauge, but what is clear is that in the under 30s bracket, bubble tea in particular is finding favour. Henry, who runs the local branch of Sharetea (Shop 1 & 2/694 Glenferrie Rd) - one of bubble tea’s biggest franchises, knows the market well. He said, “There are many high schools nearby… and we’re high on their hit list when study is over.”

Sean and Jasmine from Boba Buddy

One of the few non-franchise bubble tea and dessert shops, Boba Buddy (789 Glenferrie Rd) was recently opened by couple, Sean and Jasmine. Regarding this foray into a locale with a business model teeming with competition, Sean explained, “It’s not necessarily a good thing to have so much competition but then, that is an inherent part of business. It’s better in a way to open up in a busy, popular area for visibility.” He points out, “Our strength is that we are not a franchise, and I think it’s a very Aussie perspective to somewhat

distrust big business franchises in favour of supporting small businesses.”

Sean and Jasmine are supported in their trade by a fairly consistent customer type. “It’s mostly under 30s… Yesterday we basically had nothing but students all day, who are our biggest customer base by far.” On whether he thinks Glenferrie now has too many bubble tea and dessert shops, Sean offers, “I think it would benefit from more variety in retail but I see it becoming 80-90% hospitality in the next ten years, honestly.”

Voula from Cones Ice Cream & Gelato

While some traders have voiced a sour response to the sugary invasion, others see it as all part of the flow of ‘trending consumables’ in hospitality. “The bubble tea thing is probably a phase.” reasons Voula, independent proprietor of Cones Ice Cream & Gelato for over 20 years. “I remember the frozen yoghurt craze around a decade ago. I counted, at one point, eight frozen yoghurt shops in Glenferrie Road, now I think there’s only one left. The comfort food industry is still strong, but trends will always come and go.”

On the 'comfort' front, many of the franchise bubble tea and dessert shops rely heavily on curated marketing to attract customers. Shop fronts brandish sweet colours, impish cartoon mascots and, in many cases, idealistic notions of ‘happiness’ and ‘joy’ as though they were purchasable commodities. Of course, the idea of buying ‘happy’ is hardly new. After all, McDonald’s cleverly invented the Happy Meal so you could literally feed yourself smiles.

A further correlation can be made between the power of marketing extremely photogenic sweet treats in difficult, economically challenging times when we feel our rewards systems are low. In this sense, the saccharine wave hitting on the heels of a global pandemic and widespread economic hardship feels less than coincidental.

Time will tell if bubble tea and dessert shops are yet another phase in the history of Glenferrie Road, or here to stay. However, it is curious to observe that, in recent times, another local trade boom in the form of dental clinics has occurred in Glenferrie Hawthorn. Coincidence or correlation?