In recent years, more Chinese tea drink brands have come to Sydney. MIXUE opened its first shop in Australia near World Square in February 2023, followed by HEYTEA with a shop just across the street in July 2024, and Molly Tea arrived in Haymarket that October. When each of these stores just opened, they all drew extremely long queues which easily captured public attention.
Despite this trend, some of China’s most popular tea drink brands are still missing in Sydney’s market. Among them is the Modern China Tea Shop or in Chinese Cha Yan Yue Se 茶颜悦色 . As one of the most popular and fastest-growing brands, it opened over 200 new shops in approximately 6 months last year, and now has over 900 stores across China.
Copycat issues come with such popularity. For customers who visit their official website for the first time, Modern China Tea Shop pops up a big notice warning about fake stores and brand news. Their legal team has filed over 2,600 complaints. In Sydney, the issue dates back to as early as 2018, when the official WeChat account of Modern China Tea Shop responded to screenshots of social media posts describing a “Modern China Tea” store in Sydney, stating: “This shop has nothing to do with us”.
So why hasn’t Modern China Tea Shop expanded overseas? One reason may be its deep connections with its home city. The brand built its reputation from zero by opening shops everywhere in Changsha. It opened its first store in December 2013 and expanded quickly across the city in the years that followed. By 2017, there were already 40 shops in Changsha.
Soon, Modern China Tea Shop became known as a special local brand. It is said that you can find their shop every ten steps in central Changsha. “When people ask where’s the Modern China Tea Shop in Changsha, we can point in four different directions, and they’re all correct”. The “Changsha-only” label became part of the brand’s unique charm. Visitors treat it as a must-try, while locals see it as part of daily life. It’s now more than just a drink, but also a cultural symbol of the city.
This intense local identity might explain its hesitance to expand outside Changsha. The brand risks losing its unique “Changsha-only” mysterious charm, and may lack confidence in replicating its success elsewhere, given the challenges of supply chains, quality control, knowledge of the local customers, and competition from other brands.
It wasn’t until 2020 that Modern China Tea Shop opened its first location beyond its home city, starting with a store in Changde. Today, all its official stores remain in China. Mostly in Hunan, with only four cities outside its home province: Wuhan, Chongqing, Nanjing and Wuxi.
China’s tea drink industry has thrived in 2025. Almost every month we notice a brand going public: Good Me in February, MIXUE in March, CHANGEE in April, and Auntea Jenny in May. Among them, CHANGEE is often seen as Modern China Tea Shop’s twin because of their similar vibes and products. Founded in Yunnan more than three years later than Modern China Tea Shop, CHANGEE began opening stores outside China early in 2019, starting from Malaysia. Now, it has opened over 4,500 stores worldwide, including Singapore, Thailand, the US and France.
While many rivals are expanding overseas, Modern China Tea Shop is still taking steps to grow domestically. Will it follow the others to go global?