14 Jan 2015 – A cool tea drink in the taste you want with bubbles. Sounds sweet, isn’t? Bubble tea bar 8tea5 in Antwerp has it all. They work together with Lomography, a brand for fashionable analogue cameras, because they both are a colourful concept and both have been arisen since the eighties. Even the name of the bubble tea bar is based on it, when you call it, it sounds like ‘85. It has not only the word tea from bubble tea in it, but it also means, they are open from 8 till 5!

What is it?
The idea for bubble tea is born in 1980 in Taiwan and has been a very long time popular in Asia. The drink have the base ingredients cooled black or green tea, milk, fruit syrup and tapioca balls. Nowadays there a lot of new variants of tastes and tapioca balls are not the only topping anymore. Bubble tea is served in a transparent plastic cup and need to be shaken for the bubbles. You have to drink it with an 1 cm diameter straw to can suck the topping through it.

               

Why is it cool?
Bubble tea is finally becoming more and more popular in the western Europe. I call bubble tea the new ice cream, because bubble tea is trendy and tastes fresh. It’s sociable to drink with friends and beside the ice cream, what’s too cold for the winter outside, bubble tea can be drunk throughout the whole year. After shopping or fitness, a bubble tea bar makes a city street even cosier. Bubble tea is also not unhealthy, win-win!

Trend
8tea5 has the trend ‘flagshipstore’, because when you come in, you are in a bubble tea bar, but on the wall there are polaroid pictures hanged on. And next to it, there are Lomography cameras pasted on a chalk wall. There are model names written next to the cameras and examples of pictures made with them. To know what kind of model it is and what pictures it can make. It’s for the experience, because you can buy bubble tea and feel the eighties atmosphere with those analogue cameras and polaroid pictures hanged on there. You can only watch them and don’t need to buy a Lomography camera. But if you want one, sure you can buy it in the 8tea5 bar.

Also the trend is ‘experience in the product’, because they try to create a feeling around bubble tea drink. But not only in the bubble tea drink, but also in the Lomography analogue cameras, because they also wants you to drink bubble tea for inspiration to take pictures with an analogue camera of Lomography. They wants to create the experience in the product, by using bright and warm colours, because bubble tea is in different colours and the topping is in different colours. The bubble tea flavours are drawn in icons on an inspiring chalk wall. And every flavour has its own icon. Even the topping; tapioca balls, jelly topping, popping boba balls with different flavours that pops when you bite in it, has a spot built-in the bar, which is made of bricks. Cups with the toppings in is, have been placed after a glass with the names of the toppings written under it. The experience is in the product, because you can create with all this, your own bubble tea drink.

Price range: ++ (€3,50 for small size of bubble tea)
Place: ♥ ♥
Interior: +++
Accessibility: +++

Went to the store with Martine Santing, check her blog out by clicking on her name.