介绍： Get Ready, America: Here Come China's Food and Drink Chains
From: The New York Times
Chinese tea shops in New York and Los Angeles are offering consumers drinks topped with a milk or cheese foam. Fried chicken sandwich joints are trying to lure diners in California with affordable fast food. Restaurant and dr...

介绍： Get Ready, America: Here Come China's Food and Drink Chains
From: The New York Times
Chinese tea shops in New York and Los Angeles are offering consumers drinks topped with a milk or cheese foam. Fried chicken sandwich joints are trying to lure diners in California with affordable fast food. Restaurant and drink brands, some with thousands of stores in China, are taking root in American cities to escape punishing competition at home.
HeyTea, a tea chain originating in Jiangmen, a city in southern China, has opened three dozen stores nationwide since 2023, including a flagship operation in Times Square, in New York. Two other rival tea brands, Chagee and Naisnow, opened their first U.S. stores this year. Luckin Coffee, a chain with three outlets for every one Starbucks in China, opened several spots across Manhattan.
Wallace, one of China's largest fast-food chains with more than 20,000 stores selling fried chicken and hamburgers, landed in Walnut, Calif., for its first shop. Haidilao, China's largest hot-pot chain, is redoubling its efforts in the United States after entering the market more than a decade ago.
Many Chinese fast-food restaurants have expanded internationally in recent years, especially in Asia, but the United States, according to the founder of Tomato Capital Bob Qing, holds significant appeal because it is “the only market as mature and large as China.”
At HeyTea's store in Times Square one recent afternoon, lines stretched out the door with groups of customers waiting for elaborate drink concoctions such as a signature fruit tea topped with cheese foam.
“They are getting so big now,” said Farida Abdelaziz, 20, who waited up to 30 minutes with her friends for drinks.
Naisnow, a smaller Chinese tea brand, opened its first U.S. store in Flushing, a predominantly Asian neighborhood in New York, in October. The lines were long and sales were brisk. Its most popular items were avocado and kale-based drinks made for the United States. The company said it aimed to expand to 500 stores over the next three to five years.