CHAGEE just turned its signature tea drinks into Geelato

CHAGEE just turned its signature tea drinks into Geelato!

CHAGEE is no longer satisfied with being something you drink on a hot day. Now it wants to be something you eat with a spoon.

On May 21, the Chinese tea chain officially announced Geelato, or 茶拉朵, a new tea-flavored gelato line built around its existing drink menu. The first batch launched across 9 stores in 5 major Chinese cities: Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Chengdu, and Wuhan. The locations are not random neighborhood shops either. They include high-traffic city spots such as Shanghai’s Wukang Road, Wujiang Road, Zhengda Plaza, and Qiantan Park Lane stores, plus Shenzhen Uniwalk, Beijing Hopson One, Chengdu Chunxi Road, and Wuhan Tiandi. In other words, CHAGEE is putting Geelato exactly where people already go to shop, wander, queue, and post.

The product itself is very CHAGEE-coded. Instead of treating ice cream as a random summer add-on, the brand is turning its signature tea flavors into gelato. The first lineup includes 10 gelato flavors and 3 Geelato tea drinks, with familiar names like Boya Juexian, Yi Mo Shan Yue, and Yun Jiao Camerro showing up as scoopable versions of its popular drinks.

That is the real hook here. CHAGEE is not just selling “ice cream.” It is trying to sell tea in another form.

Prices are also positioned for impulse buying rather than luxury dessert behavior. The Geelato range sits around 18 to 24 RMB, with some reports noting a standard cup at 18 RMB and higher-priced flavors around 22 to 24 RMB. A waffle cup costs extra, and toppings have also appeared as part of the offer. That puts CHAGEE’s Geelato above fast-food cones, but still within the affordable treat zone for young urban consumers.

The early hype has been strong. During its test run at CHAGEE’s Wukang Road store in Shanghai, the Geelato counter reportedly drew long queues, with Chinese media describing waits of around two hours or more. Social posts around the launch also show the product behaving exactly like a modern Chinese dessert launch is supposed to behave: people line up, take photos, compare flavors, and turn a small cup of ice cream into a city check-in.

There is a business reason this makes sense. China’s new-style tea market has become brutally crowded. Big brands can no longer rely only on another seasonal fruit drink or a limited-edition cup sleeve to drive excitement. The leading chains already have dense store networks, young customer bases, digital ordering systems, membership programs, and social media traffic. That gives them a strong foundation to test adjacent categories quickly.

Gelato is especially tempting because it fits the summer mood, looks good in photos, and can raise the average spend per visit. A customer who came in for one tea might now add a Geelato. A friend group that might not all want the same drink suddenly has one more reason to stop by. For a brand like CHAGEE, which has built a strong identity around tea, Geelato also gives it a way to stretch the “tea” concept without abandoning its core positioning.

But this is not an easy category to scale. Milk tea is already operationally complex, but gelato adds a different layer of difficulty. It depends heavily on cold-chain management, store traffic, product freshness, staff training, texture control, and inventory loss. A tea drink can be made to order from relatively standardized ingredients. Gelato has to stay stable, smooth, fresh, and visually appealing throughout the day. If demand drops in colder seasons or in lower-traffic stores, the same freezer counter that looks exciting in summer can become an expensive operational burden.

This is why CHAGEE’s 5-city, 9-store rollout feels more like a controlled test than a full national push. The brand is starting with landmark stores where foot traffic, brand visibility, and social sharing potential are strongest. If the numbers work — queue time, repeat purchase, average order value, waste rate, staff efficiency — Geelato could become a repeatable format. If they do not, it may remain a summer spectacle for flagship locations.

CHAGEE is not alone in this freezer race. Other Chinese tea brands have also been experimenting with gelato and ice cream, including HEYTEA’s “Xilato” concept and earlier trials by brands such as Molly Tea. Chinese media has described this as part of a wider push by tea chains into the ice cream category, as gelato itself becomes a trendy offline traffic magnet in shopping districts.

Still, CHAGEE’s version has one clear advantage: it is not trying to look like a separate dessert brand. It is making the argument that tea can be drunk, scooped, photographed, and sold again in a new format.

The milk tea war has officially reached the gelato counter. And this time, the question is not just which drink tastes better. It is whether China’s tea giants can turn a summer craving into a whole new business line.