Guo Cha Club, which promises next-level Taiwanese bubble tea with trendy twists, officially opens its doors on 27 January.
As part of its launch, co-founder Oleksandr Petrykov says the first 20 visitors over Guo Cha Club’s first five days of opening will receive a tea carrying case.
“Guo Cha” means “fruit tea” in Mandarin, and the shop uses high-quality, fresh fruits like apple, mango, pineapple, foregoing additives or powdered creamers. Inspired by café culture in Asia, Taiwan in particular, the team of three is also challenging itself to come up with unique, seasonal drinks and to follow trends seen abroad.
“Luxembourg, being a capital, is under-represented: My wife is Taiwanese, and she was gutted the capital city didn’t have proper bubble tea places,” Petrykov says.
At the time of Guo Cha Club’s soft opening on 15 December 2023, only three bubble tea places existed, according to Petrykov’s research, but he hopes his company’s added value will be to keep the menu seasonally fresh and expose customers to new tea trends.
The shop offers 25 drinks five categories of products: pure teas; fruit teas; modern classics; drinks with Yakult, a Japanese probiotic; and cheese-topped drinks. The “cheese” topping is whipped cream with Parmesan flavour. Petrykov explains: “We have a mango drink with a cheese top, and customers say it’s like drinking a mango cheesecake.”
The club aspect is about creating a community. We’re planning to work with local graphic designers to introduce sticker art, to spread their work.”
Oleksandr Petrykov, Co-founder of Guo Cha Club
Tastes of Taiwan
Petrykov, an entrepreneur with a business background, says it took him less than three months to get authorisation to open the tea shop in Luxembourg. But he also participated in bubble tea training in Taiwan.
Bubble tea—also known as boba tea or pearl milk tea– originated in Taiwan in the 1980s. The drinks are made with or without milk, and the “bubbles” are essentially starchy balls, normally made of tapioca. The global bubble tea market, at $2.46 billion (€2.26 billion) in 2023, is expected to reach $4.08 billion (€3.75 billion) by 2030, according to Fortune Business Insights.
While some of Petrykov’s products are sourced from Taiwan directly—the teas and tea station, as well as the “boba” itself—Petrykov also uses local ingredients, including Luxlait milk and fruits from local wholesalers. Guo Cha Club also encourages the use of its reusable cups (with specially designed straws to slurp up the boba), offering a €0.50 discount in return.
The shop’s interior design has a minimalistic but “bright” design, with poppy shades of yellow, pink and green, and neon fruit lamps adorning the walls. Petrykov hopes the location (30, rue Beaumont) will be a fun place for gatherings. “The club aspect is about creating a community,” the co-owner explains. “We’re planning to work with local graphic designers to introduce sticker art, to spread their work.”
On 9 February, the shop will also host a K-pop party to celebrate the birthday of Jungwon, lead singer of the South Korean boy band Enhypen. It was at the request of a customer (and K-pop fan), though Petrykov admits the Guo Cha Club space is perfect for it.
“We want to bring something new. We have to be trendy, up-to-date… we want to take people by surprise.”
Oleksandr Petrykov, Co-founder of Guo Cha Club
Advice for entrepreneurs
This isn’t Petrykov’s first taste of entrepreneurship: in November 2021, he launched the Letzcompare platform, the country’s first price comparison service of its kind. It unfortunately didn’t take off quite as he’d hoped—perhaps because of the uniqueness of Luxembourg, with limitations in terms of number of providers and possibility to reach a critical mass.
The site didn’t take, Petrykov says, for both external and personal reasons. Originally from Ukraine but living in Luxembourg for more than five years, Petrykov explains that when the war broke out in February 2022, “it greatly affected me. For a good eight months, I found it really hard to focus.”
But the entrepreneur also admits he relied too much on organic traffic and tended to shift deadlines. “Sometimes you just have to park it,” he says, and encourages other entrepreneurs to be realistic: to realise that it’s alright to switch plans along the way, perhaps even coming back to a project at a later stage.
But it’s clear he has renewed energy for Guo Cha Club: “We want to bring something new. We have to be trendy, up-to-date… we want to take people by surprise.”
This article was first published on Forbes Luxembourg “Bubble tea, le thé taïwanais à l’assaut du Luxembourg“
