The Upper East Side just landed something no neighborhood outside China had gotten its hands on before — and it’s pouring tea unlike anything else on the block.
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The shop is Heytea, the fast-growing tea brand with more than 40 locations across the U.S., which picked 126 East 86th Street, near Lexington Avenue, for its first “teabar” outside China. The store opened June 5, bringing a format the brand already runs back home — one built almost entirely around tea rather than its familiar café menu — to the States for the first time.
Leading the menu is “Teamix,” which Heytea pitches as closer to a craft mocktail than a standard boba drink. Each one begins with a selected tea base, then layers in fruit, botanicals, or milk. Two of the signature pours are King Jasmine Guava Pear, blending a jasmine base with guava and fresh-pressed crystal pear, and Mountain Oolong Yuzu Apple, which pairs oolong with yuzu, pressed apple, and lemon leaf.
King Jasmine Guava Pear
Mountain Oolong Yuzu Apple
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The rest of the lineup leans into tea in quieter forms: Brewed Pot Tea served pour-over style in a warmed pot, Deep Matcha made with Jingshan matcha from Hangzhou, and Deep Chocolate, which folds intense cacao into tea. The location is also the first in the country to scoop the brand’s tea ice cream. All told, more than two dozen products are making their U.S. debut here.
Deep Matcha Latte
Salted Cheese Deep Chocolate
Gardenia Pistachio Ice Cream
The choice of block wasn’t accidental. “New York has always been one of [the company’s] most important international markets,” said Jelynn Jiang, Heytea’s Overseas Senior Brand Manager, noting how closely residents here engage with food and culture. She described the Upper East Side — with its museums, parks, and slower rhythm — as the kind of place where people “stay a while with tea.”
The brand has been working other angles into the neighborhood, too. It served as beverage sponsor at the Guggenheim’s Young Collectors Council gala in May and teamed up with the Central Park Conservancy through collectible merchandise and a beverage sponsorship at the conservancy’s Taste of Summer on June 3.
To mark the opening, Heytea ran a buy-one-get-one offer on in-store orders June 5 through 7 and handed out collectible fridge magnets to app members. A 50-percent-off deal on a second drink runs through June 14.
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