1 week Ago By Mia Castagnone
First came the bubble-tea purveyors. Now, it’s lemon time. Several mainland China-based chains that specialise in pairing fresh lemons with a variety of robust and fruity tea flavours now see the Hong Kong market as a sweet new location for their sour operations.
For example, Lam Heung Ling, a lemon-tea powerhouse from Zhanjiang in Guangdong province, has launched six stores in Hong Kong since first opening in 2023. The company uses lemons sourced from Guangxi, a city known for growing the fruit with a unique aroma and refreshing taste. Each cup is made with an entire lemon’s worth of juice.
Jo’s Cha, a brand from Guangzhou that has 500 mainland stores, launched its first Hong Kong shop in Mong Kok last year. Its signature bitter gourd lemon tea is renowned for being a “national first”. Other popular brands expanding to Hong Kong recently include Linlee, The One Lemon Tea and LMM (Ling Meng Meng).
These newcomers clearly sense a growing thirst for their zingy drinks among Hongkongers, and long queues have become common even in districts such as Causeway Bay, where multiple new shops compete for passersby. However, Hong Kong also presents a different flavour of business challenge than the operators may be used to in the mainland China market, analysts said. The market value of China’s new-style tea drinks is likely to surpass 200 billion yuan (US$27.
6 billion) in 2025, up a third from an estimated 150 billion yuan in 2023, according to a joint report by the China C.
