Why Gotcha Fresh Tea has an in-house design team

The brand hopes to reach 100 locations in Australia by 2027.

As more bubble tea players started to catch on that premiumisation is the key to attracting consumers in a challenged market, Gotcha Fresh Tea is leaning on its in-house design team to stay competitive and ahead of the game.

Gotcha Fresh Tea, launched in early 2018, positions itself as a luxury bubble tea brand similar to Starbucks. The stores are designed to create a cosy and inviting atmosphere, featuring pastel pink hues, Italian marble counters, and soft peach walls.

According to Roger Fu, CEO and founder of Gotcha, their focus encompasses all aspects of luxury. This includes everything from the fit-outs and customer experience to the product itself.

The challenge, Roger said, lies in delivering unique and innovative products whilst ensuring consumer acceptance of their brand’s ‘designs’.

“That’s why in the last three years, we have done a lot of collaborations with global brands like Hello Kitty, Pokemon, and Sesame Street. We have an in-house design team, led by myself, looking at the design language to make it unique,” Roger explained.

Understanding the Western market is crucial, Roger emphasised. This is why the design team boasts over 20 years of experience in the retail industry.

The team would engage in in-depth research and identify new trending flavour profiles. This resulted in Gotcha creating fusion drink products like its collaboration with Hello Kitty’s 50th anniversary.

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With a strong design team focused on understanding market trends and consumer preferences, Gotcha Fresh Tea has positioned itself to not only innovate in product offerings but also to expand its footprint both domestically and internationally. This strategic approach has enabled the brand to grow rapidly and enter new markets.

Road to 100

Gotcha Fresh Tea has been very busy in the last few years. In June, Gotcha launched new outlets in Doncaster and Waverley Garden in Victoria, Adelaide Myer Centre Rundle Mall, World Square in Sydney and a new flagship site at the Sydney Fish Market.

Internationally, Gotcha said it will have its first store in Mexico, with 10 more under negotiation. Gotcha also plans to open 20 more stores in Saudi Arabia this year after generating US$1.3m in sales in its outlet in Jeddah.

However, Roger said there are challenges in growing.

“Because we have over 50 outlets in Australia and we are present in 13 countries, keeping the quality consistent and sourcing the ingredients whilst also supplying to global franchisees is a challenging task for us,” Roger said.

Maintaining costs is another challenge. To address these and ensure a consistent quality across the business Gotcha has implemented several strategic investments. These investments not only focus on operational efficiency but also on enhancing the overall customer experience.

One such investment is how Gotcha built warehouses in three major Australian cities and formed a logistics team over the past three years.

“We also spent a lot of time building our international sourcing team to maintain the luxury quality consistently. We are getting a lot of team support to come to our head office as well. This strategy saves us a lot in costs and gives us more funds to source more quality products” Roger said.

Focus on investments

Meanwhile, Roger said they continue to invest in their customer experience. An anticipated launch for them is their all-in-one rewards programme called Gotcha Club.

“The Gotcha Club is not your traditional loyalty app. Aside from collecting points and rewards, the app also lets you get the latest news from Gotcha and even play games,” Roger explained.

One such game is the Lucky Wheels game where customers can earn even more points that can be used to redeem exclusive merchandise. They will also experiment with real-time location updates wherein the app will provide surprise deals whenever a user is near a Gotcha outlet.

Aside from that, Gotcha said they are interested in investing more in kitchen technology, one such is the automatic bubble tea shaker. By doing so, Roger emphasised that Gotcha staff will also be able to focus on interacting more with customers.

For now, Roger said they are busy planning more international entries one of which is in the UK. Roger also said they are planning yet another big collaboration in the near term which will be revealed in the next few months.