Brewing Success - A Chat with TeaJoy Founder Ning Ma On Her Journey From Lockdown Innovation to Foodservice Triumphs

TeaJoy, born during lockdown at MamaLan, redefined bubble tea with a unique jasmine tea and fruit syrup. Key partnerships with Steak & Co, Las Iguanas, Brakes and Black Sheep Coffee propelled TeaJoy into mainstream foodservice.

Join us at the Foodservice Summit on March 19th where Ning will be on a panel discussing all things operations in the world of Foodservice.

Can you tell me about TeaJoy and how you got started?

I have a restaurant in Brixton called MamaLan and during lockdown we lost all of our sit-in trade so we really had to look at how we could increase our sales through that period. Bubble tea really jumped out at me. People generally go to Chinatown to get bubble tea but due to lockdown people couldn’t travel, so I thought, I can sell bubble tea to South-Londoners!

I realised quite quickly that making bubble tea is quite a complex process and it is difficult to have a consistent level of quality and taste so we had quite a few operational issues in the beginning. I came up with the idea of a product I can add water to to make the bubble tea and so TeaJoy came about. 9 months later I had a sample - a syrup made of high quality jasmine tea and real fruit, you add water and  ice and voila, you have bubble tea. 

Can you tell me about TeaJoy’s journey into foodservice? 

I happened to be sitting next to the lady running Steak & Co at an operator’s dinner and she was super interested in the concept of TeaJoy. I met her and her senior team in the following weeks and after a successful meeting, they listed it. So that’s how we became a business. 

Our listing with Las Iguanas was big for us. Again, I met the CEO at an operator’s dinner and he loved the product and they took us on board. Initially I was sending the product to individual sites and it very quickly became apparent that this wasn’t going to work as I was sending boxes to 50 different sites every week. We didn’t have the resources to do that. They then took us into Brakes as a nominated supplier. Once we became a supplier in Brakes, we got several more customers. 

Another big one was Black Sheep Coffee. I pitched to them at a conference. Again, they don’t do direct to site so we had to work with their distributor or wholesaler.

When did you realise Foodservice was going to be big for TeaJoy?

Foodservice is necessary if you want to grow and scale. We realised it was going to be big for us when we started working with Brakes, that was a turning point for us. 

What advice would you give to someone starting out in the industry?

You have to be really thick-skinned! At the beginning you won’t know anyone and you really have to put yourself out there. It’s good if you approach a wholesaler/distributor with some customers who already want to work with you.

Do you have any retail plans? 

We’re developing a retail box so people can make the bubble tea at home so that’s what we’re looking at next.