Sharetea Brand Guidelines: A 1992 Nanyang Street Tea Stall Grown Into a Global Franchise

A director’s tea stand in Taipei.

Sharetea began in 1992 as a black tea stall on Nanyang Street in Taipei, the Taipei Times reported in January 2022. The company’s own story says its founder, Cheng Kai-Lung, was working as a director in film and television that year, left the job and set up a tea street vendor business; the Cairo magazine CairoScene told the same story in October 2022, describing the chain as having grown from “the mere dream of a director in the form of a tea street stand made to be shared.” A September 2025 report on the Taiwanese news site ETtoday gave 1994 and Taichung as the starting point instead; the company, the Taipei Times and English Wikipedia all give 1992 and Taipei.

Its Chinese name is 歇腳亭. The stall grew into shops, and in 2004 Cheng set up Lian Fa International Dining Business Corporation, the company that still owns the brand. Lian Fa’s English-language timeline says that in the same year Sharetea obtained a patent for a T-shaped plastic carrier bag for drinks.

Franchising followed. Lian Fa says it launched Sharetea franchises in Taiwan in 2006, opened in Hong Kong and Singapore in 2010, and signed agreements for Dubai, Australia, Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia in 2011. The Taipei Times dated the first of four Dubai outlets to 2012. By 2013 the chain had reached the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, and in 2015 Lian Fa set up an American subsidiary, Lilian USA LLC, according to both the company and English Wikipedia.

Milk tea, fruit tea and the shop as a set.

Sharetea sells Taiwanese bubble tea: milk teas, brewed teas, fruit teas and ice-blended drinks, with toppings such as tapioca pearls, pudding and jelly, and a cheese-foam topping it calls Creama, English Wikipedia says. The company says it uses Taiwanese high mountain tea and tests its leaves for consistency, and that a research and development team writes its recipes; those are its own claims.

The shops themselves are part of the brand. Lian Fa’s timeline counts its store designs in generations: a fifth-generation concept in 2008, a global flagship store in the East District of Taipei in 2017, and a ninth-generation concept store at Da’an Zhongxiao in 2020. The company says the Taipei flagship won a Silver award at Italy’s A’ Design Award in 2018. In 2019, it says, the original Nanyang Street shop was renovated and reopened with a design based on the look of the historic street.

The chain has also tied its name to other companies’ products. Lian Fa says it formed a joint venture, Sharetea Japan, with the conveyor-belt sushi chain Sushiro in 2019 to sell bubble tea in Sushiro restaurants, and lists licensed ice lollies and buns made with Taiwanese food firms. In 2023 it says Sharetea ran a promotion with the mobile game Cookie Run Kingdom in the United States.

Much of the growth has been abroad. The Taipei Times reported in January 2022 that the chain had more than 350 outlets in 13 markets, including Canada, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Vietnam; the US was the largest market with 125 shops, followed by Hong Kong with 44, while Taiwan had 22. Lian Fa told the paper that its US expansion was focused on adding states, and that it had signed a partner for a first shop in Kuwait. CairoScene reported in October 2022 that a Cairo shop would make Egypt the 14th country with a Sharetea, and named mango milk tea and strawberry green tea among the drinks on its menu.

Cups, counters and owners.

Bubble tea and tea-drink chains sell a drink that is made in front of the customer, so most of their public image is built around the cup. On their own websites, Taiwanese brands such as Chatime and Gong Cha lead with pictures of individual drinks and group them into named ranges and short lists: Gong Cha calls its top five drinks worldwide the “Famous Five,” and Chatime’s US website sorts its menu into ranges such as Signatures, Milk Tea Classics and Fruity.

Drink and staff names do much of the brand work. Chatime’s US website builds its copy on tea puns, calling its counter staff “T-Ristas,” while Gong Cha names drinks by their tea, fruit and toppings, from milk foam to “QQ” jelly. Store fronts and menu boards appear in the companies’ franchise pages and news posts, where a new store design or a first store in a new country is presented as an event.

Ordering apps and online shops are now part of the picture. In 2020 the Taipei Times reported that Chatime’s parent, La Kaffa International, had begun taking orders through an app with a software partner, and in 2026 Nation’s Restaurant News reported that Gong Cha was rolling out a “digital kitchen.” For a designer, these tools are part of the brand as much as the cup or the counter.

Behind the cups are corporate histories that are often more complicated than the store fronts suggest. Many chains grew through franchising, with regional partners running whole countries, and some have changed owners several times. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it now, and how it is sold — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A listed owner and a smaller home market.

Lian Fa’s shares began trading on Taiwan’s Emerging Stock Board on 7 January 2021, and the Taipei Times reported in January 2022 that the company was moving up to the Taipei Exchange through an initial public offering. Lian Fa’s timeline records the listing on 14 January 2022, under the code 2756. The company says Sharetea had more than 380 stores worldwide and was in 25 US states by its 30th anniversary in 2022.

At home the picture changed. ETtoday reported in September 2025 that only three Sharetea shops remained in Taiwan, that one in Xinying, Tainan, would close at the end of that month as its contract ended, and that the group was concentrating on a newer drinks brand, UG, and on overseas markets, where it counted more than 500 Sharetea stores. Lian Fa says it launched UG, which it also calls Uni Green, in 2024 with automated tea-making machines.

The United States remains the main market. Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported in December 2025 that Sharetea had more than 160 shops in the US after 14 years there, and that Cheng, now chairman of Lian Fa, had opened the first US branch of UG in San Gabriel, California, on 6 December 2025. Cheng told the agency that close to 80 percent of Sharetea’s US customers were not ethnic Chinese, and that the chain adjusted sweetness and flavours to local tastes.

For a design guide, Sharetea shows how a single street stall can become a franchise system whose shop designs are numbered like product generations. Compare Chatime and Gong Cha, two other Taiwanese tea chains that franchised abroad. For this guide we use black-tea amber, cream and a leaf green with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Sharetea’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.