heytea today officially opened its inaugural store in Thailand at Bangkok’s iconic CentralWorld, marking its market entry with a heytea lab—the brand’s most comprehensive experimental store format. As Southeast Asia’s first heytea lab and the third overseas heytea lab, it brings a tea lab, bake lab, and gelato lab under one roof. The opening also doubles as the global debut of “teaAir,” heytea’s newly unveiled “tea cloud” concept.
Despite heavy rain across Bangkok on opening day, enthusiasm remained high. Before the store officially opened, more than 500 customers were already waiting outside, with the queue stretching over 300 metres and estimated ordering wait times exceeding three hours. Building on successful heytea lab launches in New York and Toronto, the Bangkok heytea lab offers local consumers the brand’s most immersive and diverse product lineup to date, solidifying Bangkok as a strategic hub for heytea’s global footprint and continuous product innovation.
heytea lab expands to Bangkok’s CentralWorld, tapping into a global lifestyle hub
heytea’s choice to open its first Thailand store at CentralWorld reflects Bangkok’s growing significance as a global lifestyle hub. Ranked 8th on Time Out’s 2026 list of the world’s best cities, Bangkok boasts a vibrant young consumer base and a steady stream of international visitors, playing a key role in the region’s culinary and trend culture. Positioned in the heart of the Ratchaprasong district, CentralWorld serves as a landmark retail destination and a preferred launchpad for global brands entering Thailand.
For its Thailand debut, heytea is introducing heytea lab, its most comprehensive experimental store format. First launched in 2016, the heytea lab serves as the brand’s inspiration hub—a platform to test new product categories, creative formats, and customer experiences. The concept adapts to each market, drawing inspiration from local culture and consumer habits. Following the launch of its updated heytea lab 2.0 at Shanghai’s Fengshengli in February—which drew seven-hour opening-day queues and remains a popular destination for travelers—heytea is bringing the format to Southeast Asia for the first time. The Bangkok debut storemarks the region’s first heytea lab to integrate a tea lab, bake lab, and gelato lab under one roof, featuring open counter spaces that give visitors a clear view of the handcrafted teas, fresh bakes, and artisanal gelato being prepared.
Rather than relying on a generic global template, the Bangkok store adopts a localized design approach inspired by Thailand’s historic floating markets. The space reinterprets the rhythms of life along the water—movement, gathering, and pause—within a modern tea setting. Facing CentralWorld Plaza, the exterior façade draws inspiration from traditional wooden boats, while the indoor seating area mirrors the soft contours of a riverbank. By pairing natural timber elements with sleek metallic finishes, the space delivers a fresh, contemporary tea experience in the heart of Bangkok. Combined with the heytea lab format and open counter layout, the store presents a uniquely localized expression of the brand.
Caption: Bangkok’s heytea lab: floating market design with open counters.
Having launched its international expansion in 2018, heytea has significantly accelerated its overseas footprint since 2023, entering key global markets including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Today, the brand operates about 4,000 stores globally, including more than 120 locations outside mainland China—reflecting a nearly sixfold increase in its international store count over the past year.
As part of this global growth, heytea has introduced the heytea lab format to high-profile international locations, including New York’s Times Square and Toronto Eaton Centre. The Bangkok debut expands this global network and represents the brand’s latest milestone in Southeast Asia. Starting with CentralWorld, heytea aims to deepen its engagement with Thai consumers while continuing to expand across the region and connect with tea lovers worldwide.
A global debut in Bangkok: heytea creates a Thai-inspired “tea cloud”
The Bangkok heytea lab brings the brand’s global lineup to Thailand while serving as the worldwide launchpad for an entirely new product format. Known as “teaAir,” this new “tea cloud” concept builds on heytea’s signature cloud-style toppings with a major shift: for the first time, tea itself forms the foundation of the cloud. Through extensive crafting to balance brewed tea, coconut, milk fat, and air, heytea developed a light, fluffy topping with a distinctive, airy texture.
Making its global debut in Bangkok, the first teaAir creation—teaAir · Rock Oolong Jackfruit—draws directly from Thailand’s tropical fruit heritage. Rock Oolong tea is paired with fresh jackfruit, papaya, and coconut, offering a fresh take on familiar local flavors.
Caption: The globally debuted “teaAir · Rock Oolong Jackfruit”
This localized approach extends across the store’s other concepts. The bake lab offers a Thai Milk Tea Croissant Egg Tart, while the gelato lab serves Lime Thai Milk Gelato, reimagining classic Thai flavor profiles in baked and frozen forms. For heytea, localization goes beyond modifying global recipes; it involves integrating local ingredients and culinary traditions directly into product creation. In this way, Bangkok serves not just as a new market, but as a vital source of inspiration for the brand’s global pipeline.
Meanwhile, global staples like the Triple Matcha Latte continue to drive strong international demand. In 2025, a social media post by Thai artist Lisa featured the brand, sparking fresh interest in its matcha lineup across global markets—leading to rapid sell-outs from Singapore to the U.S. West Coast. The drink remained a top performer at the Bangkok opening, underscoring a two-way cultural exchange: heytea brings its proven global favorites to Thailand, while Thai-inspired innovations gain a platform to reach tea drinkers worldwide.
From new tea creations to global lifestyle experiences, heytea continues to shape youth culture
Even before its official launch in Thailand, heytea had already built substantial momentum among local consumers through travel content and organic social media buzz. Many Thai travelers frequented heytea locations in cities like Shanghai, Singapore, New York, and Los Angeles, sharing their experiences on travel and lifestyle platforms such as Pantip and Readme.me. Earlier this year, when temporary hoarding featuring heytea’s branding went up at CentralWorld, it sparked immediate curiosity and viral conversation online.
This momentum goes beyond a single viral moment. As heytea expands across key global capitals—including New York, London, Singapore, Melbourne, and Sydney—it uses experimental store formats and immersive design to integrate “New-Style Tea” into the everyday spaces where young consumers gather and shop. Multi-faceted collaborations across fashion, art, and pop culture have further elevated tea from a traditional beverage into a contemporary lifestyle symbol.
Over the years, heytea has bridged tea culture with global pop culture through major partnerships—from global product drops with POP MART to artistic collaborations with Yayoi Kusama, alexanderwang, and “WICKED”. In New York, the brand has aligned with prominent cultural and lifestyle partners, supporting the Guggenheim Museum’s YCC Party and collaborating with local staples like the Central Park Conservancy and Levain Bakery.
The launch of the Bangkok heytea lab reflects this broader strategy. By combining product innovation, locally rooted store architecture, and dynamic retail design, heytea continues to embed modern tea culture into the daily lives of young consumers around the world.
