Before UTea, I ran seven Japanese sushi restaurants in Brisbane.
After more than a decade in hospitality, working long hours across seven venues, I started thinking seriously about a change — not just a new restaurant, but a completely different direction.
I was introduced to the bubble tea ingredients industry by a supplier who later founded Mr Bubble Tea. He shared his view on where the industry was heading in Australia, and that conversation stayed with me. The idea kept building from there, and the decision became final in his office in Brisbane: I would close the restaurant business I had built over ten years and move to Melbourne to start a dedicated bubble tea ingredients supply company.
I chose Melbourne for two reasons. I studied at Monash University, so I already knew the city and its market. And Mr Bubble Tea already had warehouses in Brisbane and Sydney — Melbourne, with its scale and hospitality market, was the natural next step.
In 2019, I sold all seven restaurants and closed that chapter after more than ten years. I then spent about three months training at Mr Bubble Tea’s Brisbane office, learning the products, warehousing and supply chain side of the industry from the ground up.
In June 2019, I arrived in Melbourne on my own — no warehouse, no fixed address, no existing customer base. Everything had to be built from scratch: finding a place to live, finding a warehouse, learning the market, and reaching out to customers one by one.
By September 2019, I signed the lease on UTea’s first warehouse, in Knoxfield. It was not a big space, but it is where UTea actually began — and where it has grown from a one-person decision into the business it is today.
— Jason, Founder of UTea
