Tealive Brand Guidelines: Loob Holding’s 2017 Tea Chain Born From the Chatime Split

A franchise ends and a new name appears in 2017.

Tealive is a Malaysian tea-drink chain launched in February 2017 by Loob Holding, the company led by its chief executive Bryan Loo. Before Tealive, Loob was the Malaysian master franchisee of Chatime, the bubble-tea brand owned by La Kaffa International of Taiwan. Free Malaysia Today reported in February 2017 that the dispute between the two companies began in early December 2016, when La Kaffa ended the master franchise agreement even though more than 20 years of the deal remained, and that both sides had taken the matter to the Singapore International Arbitration Centre.

Loob answered with a new name rather than a new network. On 17 February 2017 Loo launched Tealive at the Pavilion shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur and told reporters that franchisees behind more than 95% of the 165 Chatime outlets in Malaysia had chosen to move to the new brand; three franchisees, running four stalls, stayed with Chatime, FMT reported. At the same launch, after La Kaffa had questioned the ingredients used in the Malaysian outlets, Loo said Tealive’s products were certified by JAKIM, Malaysia’s Department of Islamic Development. English Wikipedia lists four drinks on the opening menu, among them a Signature Brown Sugar Pearl Milk Tea, a Roasted Milk Tea with Handmade Pearls and a Signature Passion Fruit Green Tea.

The Chatime name did not leave Malaysia. A new company, Chatime Malaysia, took over as master franchisee for the Taiwanese brand in 2017, FMT reported the following year. Looking back in May 2019, The Edge Financial Daily described Tealive as a brand “born following a messy corporate divorce” with La Kaffa after the Chatime franchise agreement ended, and noted that some 45 bubble-tea operators were then active in Malaysia, among them Chatime, The Alley, Tiger Sugar, Gong Cha and Koi Thé alongside Tealive.

Courts, a settlement and a growing network.

The split went through the courts before it was settled. In May 2017 the High Court dismissed La Kaffa’s application for an injunction against Loob, leaving the Tealive outlets open. On 27 June 2018 the Court of Appeal reversed that decision and granted an injunction restraining Loob from running a business similar to Chatime’s, FMT reported; in early July 2018 the same court dismissed Loob’s request for a stay, and Loob said it would turn to the Federal Court, Vulcan Post reported. The matter then ended out of court. In a joint statement reported by Marketing-Interactive on 30 August 2018, the two companies said they had signed a settlement agreement to “amicably resolve” all disputes from their former franchise relationship and to withdraw all proceedings in the Malaysian courts and the arbitration in Singapore. The statement said the settlement was not an admission of any allegation or liability, and the other terms were kept confidential.

Tealive kept growing through the dispute. By May 2019 it had more than 200 outlets in Malaysia, The Edge Financial Daily reported, and had just opened its first outlet in Europe, in Manchester. Inside Retail Asia, citing Business Insider in March 2019, counted seven outlets in Vietnam, two in China and one in Australia, and said about a third of the network was run by franchisees. English Wikipedia says the first Tealive drive-thru opened in early 2019 with Petronas in Subang Jaya, and that the 800th branch opened on 25 September 2022 in Batu Kawan, Penang; Marketing-Interactive described that store as a drive-thru at Ikano Centres Batu Kawan.

Ownership widened in June 2021, when the private equity firm Creador took a 30% stake in Loob Holding, Marketing-Interactive reported in October 2022. By then Loob also ran Tealive Eats, a ready-to-eat food line, and the coffee chain Bask Bear Coffee. In 2019 its other food businesses in Malaysia included Gindaco, Croissant Taiyaki, Define:food and Ko Ko Kai, according to Inside Retail Asia.

Design and documentation.

Malaysian and Singaporean food chains tend to tell their story through the shop itself. Kopitiam chains present a coffee-shop past inside modern premises: Ya Kun Kaya Toast puts the same posters about its old stall in every outlet, according to a case study by the World Intellectual Property Organization, while Killiney Kopitiam still trades from the shophouse where its predecessor opened in 1919. Bakery, cake and bubble-tea chains often lean instead on bright counters, packaged goods and the look of the cup, box or bag a customer carries away.

Menus are written dish by dish and drink by drink. Kaya toast, soft-boiled eggs, laksa and nasi lemak appear under their everyday names, and coffee and tea orders often keep the local shorthand of the kopitiam, such as kopi O or teh C, which some chains explain on their own websites for newcomers.

Store networks are something the companies publish themselves. Websites list outlets at home and abroad, often in malls, food courts and airport terminals, and franchise pages set out what a partner receives: the trade name, trademarks, training and support. Counts change quickly, so this guide gives each one with the date and source it comes from.

Ownership is described plainly. Some chains remain family businesses passed to a second generation; others belong to listed groups or larger food companies, or have changed hands as their franchise networks grew. Corporate pages on founders, owners and franchise partners are where each company sets out its own account, and this guide marks clearly which facts rest only on that account.

Stores at home and abroad, and drinks in sachets.

The most detailed recent picture of the business comes from Loob’s draft prospectus. In June 2025 Marketing-Interactive reported that Loob Berhad had filed a prospectus exposure, published on the Securities Commission Malaysia website, for a listing on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia. The draft gave 831 Tealive stores and 135 Bask Bear stores as of February 2025, plus 121 franchised Tealive stores in Myanmar, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Mauritius, Cambodia, Canada, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. The UAE master franchise was signed in Dubai in October 2024 with Eureka Restaurant and Café, The Vibes reported. As of that June 2025 report, the listing existed only as a draft filing.

Much of Tealive’s visible brand work happens through partnerships. The same filing, as Marketing-Interactive reported it, named co-branding and recipe tie-ups with Wall’s, Secret Recipe Malaysia, myBurgerLab and Santan, and licensed characters from Squid Game, Kuromi and Pokémon, among others. In June 2025 Tealive also moved onto supermarket shelves with its first 3-in-1 sachet drinks, in milk tea, coffee and chocolate versions, sold at AEON and in Tealive stores.

For a design guide, Tealive shows how a franchise network can move to a new name within weeks and then build that name through collaborations and character tie-ups. Compare BOH, a Malaysian tea brand of a much older kind, and Secret Recipe, one of Tealive’s collaboration partners. For this guide we use a plum purple, a milk-tea brown and a near-black with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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