Gotcha Fresh Tea

Armed with a cute punny name (tea = cha, so Got Tea) and aggressive marketing plans, Australian brand Gotcha has pitched itself as “the first luxury bubble tea brand in the U.S.” – and the same in its native country – though that appears to be more than a bit ambitious. The Costa Mesa location we visited replaced the legitimately distinctive Macchiato Coffee House, which famously served Potted Plant Thai Iced Teas out of oversized vases, with yet another tea shop selling me-too drinks in plastic cups.

From the production side, the luxury appears to be sourcing. Gotcha says it farms its own tea in Taiwan, then mixes it in local shops with fruits, milk, and sweeteners for a variety of generally predictable offerings: milk teas, fruit teas, fruit milk teas, smoothies in matcha, chocolate, coffee, and matcha variants, fruit slushies, and yogurts. Eleven of their dozen most popular drinks are items widely available anywhere – Thai tea, Vietnamese coffee, mango and matcha smoothies, and brown sugar boba milk, with purple rice yogurt as the only odd man out.

For customers, the “luxury” here appears to be restricted to upselling. Drinks initially appear to be basically the same prices as you’d pay elsewhere, until you realize that adding anything – boba, jelly, puddiing, foam, whipped cream, a caramel drizzle, or different milks – will add 75 cents per item to the cost. So even with many advertised drink prices at $5 to $6, the customized drinks we ordered wound up going for just under $8 each.