China’s Bubble Tea Boom Creates a Half-Dozen Billionaires
Sellers of the hugely popular drink are rushing to cash in, but increasing competition threatens to spoil the sugar rush.
Are you a fan of bubble tea? Love it or hate it, you probably know a millennial or Gen Zer who’s crazy about the cloyingly sweet drink filled with sticky balls of tapioca (the “bubbles,” or “boba”) that make it almost chewy as it slithers down your throat. That growing passion has created at least a half-dozen billionaires in China in the past few years and is at the heart of several other potential fortunes.
On April 23, Sichuan Baicha Baidao Industrial Co., China’s No. 3 bubble tea chain, is scheduled to start trading, aiming to raise more than $300 million in the biggest Hong Kong listing since November. That valuation would give its husband-and-wife founders, Wang Xiaokun and Liu Weihong, a combined net worth of $2.7 billion based on the 73% stake they’ll own after the initial public offering, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.