Heytea

For nearly three years, the Irvine location of Taiwanese tea chain YiFang Tea was improbably busy: Styled like an old-fashioned tea stand that just happened to have been built inside the existing Orange Tree Square plaza’s large glass windows – mirroring the faux retro design of fellow Taiwanese tea chain Hechalou – YiFang seemingly had lines out the door up until it abruptly closed in mid-2024. Yet within weeks, the small space transitioned into Heytea, a southern Chinese chain that was founded in 2012 as Royaltea, rebranding to its current name in 2016.

Describing itself as a “New Style” tea shop, Heytea only sells tea – no coffee or cocoa – and sticks to prices from $6 to $8 per cup. The menu divides into Matcha, Fruit Tea, Creamy Milk Tea, and Leaf Tea sections, alternating between mixing tea bases with latte milk, cloud foam, milkshake ice, or coconut water. If you prefer fruit, you can choose from mango, grape, strawberry, passion fruit, mulberry, or grapefruit teas, with or without cloud foam.

The Heytea ordering experience is weirder in practice than concept. You can choose to order from an app on your phone, a kiosk inside, or a person at a register, at which point you’ll be assigned a four- or five-digit number. A screen next to the counter lets you – and everyone else – know that there’s a roughly 10-minute wait for drinks, while showing how many orders are currently being processed. Since there’s only a single chair and no tables inside Heytea, this system means a bunch of people will inevitably be standing around waiting for drinks, creating more of a line than at tea shops with actual seating.

We don’t mind waiting a reasonable length of time for drinks. But a couple of us were put off by a sour dairy smell inside Heytea, which we suspected might be their cheese cloud foam – something Heytea takes credit for inventing, and previously used as a menu differentiator in “Cheezo” branded fruit-cheese drinks. On our visit, all of the “Cheesy Fruit Tea” drinks were missing from the menu.