Shake and Tea Shop Marketing: How to Build a Loyal Customer Base
Feb 14, 2025
The bubble tea and shake market has exploded. What was once a niche offering is now mainstream, with new shops opening constantly. Walk through any busy shopping area and you'll pass multiple options within minutes.
That's great for customers. For shop owners, it means standing out requires more than just serving good drinks.
The shops that thrive in this competitive landscape aren't necessarily the ones with the most innovative recipes or the lowest prices. They're the ones that turn first-time visitors into regulars — customers who choose them habitually, recommend them to friends, and keep coming back even when alternatives are closer or cheaper.
This guide covers practical strategies to attract more customers to your shake and tea shop and, just as importantly, keep them coming back.
Start With Exceptional Customer Service
This might sound obvious, but it's worth stating clearly: customer service is your most powerful differentiator. In a market where many shops serve similar products at similar prices, the experience you create becomes the reason customers choose you.
The Details Matter
Great customer service in a shake or tea shop isn't about grand gestures. It's about consistency in the small moments that customers notice (even when they don't consciously register them):
Genuine greetings when customers enter
Eye contact and attention during ordering
Remembering regulars and their usual orders
Friendly conversation that doesn't feel forced
Thank-yous that sound like they mean it
These interactions take seconds but shape how customers feel about your shop. A customer who feels welcomed and valued will return. One who feels like just another transaction will try somewhere else next time.
Speed Without Sacrificing Quality
Shake and tea shops serve customers who are often on the go. They want their drink quickly, but they also want it made properly. Balancing speed and quality is essential.
Streamline your processes where you can. Have ingredients prepped and accessible. Train staff to work efficiently without rushing. Minimise friction in ordering and payment.
But never sacrifice quality for speed. A drink made in 90 seconds that's exactly right creates a better impression than one made in 60 seconds that's inconsistent.
Train and Empower Your Team
Your staff are your shop's personality. Every interaction they have reflects on your business. Invest in training that goes beyond drink preparation:
How to greet and engage customers
How to handle questions about customisation
How to deal with complaints gracefully
How to remember and recognise regulars
Empower your team to make small decisions that enhance customer experience — offering to remake a drink that's not quite right, giving a regular their usual without asking, or making genuine recommendations based on customer preferences.
Build a Loyalty Programme That Works
Great customer service gets people through the door and creates positive impressions. A loyalty programme gives them a concrete reason to keep choosing you over competitors.
For shake and tea shops specifically, loyalty programmes are particularly effective because:
Purchase frequency is high (many customers buy daily or multiple times per week)
Transaction values are relatively consistent (making stamp cards natural)
Competition is fierce (giving customers a reason to stay loyal matters)
The product is habitual (once customers have a "usual," they want to stick with it)
Design Your Programme for Your Business
The classic stamp card model works brilliantly for shake and tea shops. Customers understand it instantly: buy a certain number of drinks, get one free. No complicated point calculations, no confusing tiers.
A typical structure might be:
Collect 9 stamps, get the 10th drink free
Earn a stamp with every purchase over a minimum value
Free drink can be any standard menu item (or up to a certain value)
This simplicity is a strength. Customers don't need to think about how it works — they just know they're making progress toward a free drink.
With Perkstar, you can set up a digital stamp card in minutes. Customers save it to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet with a quick QR scan — no app to download, no account to create. Their loyalty card is always on their phone, always accessible.
Go Beyond Basic Stamps
While simple stamp cards work, you can enhance your programme with additional elements:
Birthday rewards: Capture birth dates when customers sign up and send them a free drink or special offer on their birthday. It's a small gesture that creates genuine goodwill.
Welcome bonuses: Give new members a head start — perhaps two stamps credited immediately when they join. This creates instant progress and investment in completing the card.
Bonus stamp promotions: Run occasional "double stamp" days during slow periods to drive traffic when you need it most.
Perkstar's automation features let you set up birthday rewards and welcome bonuses once, then run them automatically for every customer. The system handles the timing; you get the relationship benefits.
Digital Beats Paper Every Time
If you're still using paper stamp cards, you're working against yourself.
Paper cards get lost. They get left at home. They end up crumpled in bags, forgotten in wallets, or thrown away during clean-outs. Every lost card represents lost motivation for that customer to return.
Digital loyalty cards stored on phones solve this completely. Customers always have their card because they always have their phone. There's nothing to lose, nothing to forget.
Digital also gives you capabilities paper never could:
Push notifications to bring customers back
Data on visit frequency and patterns
Automated messages for birthdays and milestones
The ability to communicate directly with your loyal customers
For a shake and tea shop competing in a crowded market, these tools matter.
Surprise and Delight Your Best Customers
Loyalty programmes provide expected rewards — customers know what they're working toward. But some of the most powerful customer experiences come from unexpected moments.
The Psychology of Surprise
When customers receive something they didn't anticipate, it registers differently than expected rewards. Surprises feel like gifts rather than transactions. They create stories customers want to tell. They build emotional connection that pure points systems don't achieve.
The key is that surprises must feel genuine, not calculated. Customers can tell the difference between authentic generosity and marketing tactics dressed up as kindness.
Ideas for Surprise Moments
Random bonus stamps: Occasionally give a customer an extra stamp "just because." It costs you almost nothing (just the eventual free drink) but creates disproportionate goodwill.
Free topping upgrades: When a customer orders, offer a free premium topping or add-on. "Would you like to try our new mango pearls? On the house today."
First-taste exclusives: When you're testing new flavours, invite your regulars to try them before they officially launch. This makes them feel like insiders and gets you valuable feedback.
Anniversary acknowledgments: Note when customers hit milestones — their 50th visit, one year as a member — and acknowledge it with a small reward or simply a genuine thank-you.
Weather-based surprises: On particularly hot days, throw in an extra ice or a size upgrade. On cold days, offer a warming add-on. Tying surprises to shared experiences (the weather) makes them feel spontaneous and thoughtful.
Make It Sustainable
The trap with surprise and delight is overcommitting. If you promise too much or do it too frequently, surprises become expectations — and then they lose their power.
Keep surprises genuinely surprising by:
Making them random rather than predictable
Keeping them small enough to be sustainable
Focusing them on your best customers (loyalty members)
Not announcing them as part of your programme
The goal is creating memorable moments, not additional programme benefits. The difference matters.
Build Your Online Presence
Your physical shop serves customers who walk by. Your online presence reaches everyone else — and often shapes whether they decide to visit in the first place.
Social Media That Works
Instagram and TikTok are natural fits for shake and tea shops. Your products are visual, colourful, and satisfying to watch being made. That's content gold.
What to post:
High-quality photos of your drinks (lighting and presentation matter)
Short videos of drinks being prepared (satisfying to watch)
Behind-the-scenes glimpses of your team and shop
New flavour announcements and seasonal specials
Customer photos (with permission) showing people enjoying your drinks
Stories and reels that show personality, not just products
Engagement matters more than follower count:
Respond to every comment and message
Ask questions that invite responses
Run polls about new flavours or favourite combinations
Share and celebrate customer-generated content
Social media for a local business isn't about going viral. It's about staying present in your community's awareness, giving potential customers a sense of your vibe, and giving existing customers reasons to engage between visits.
Google Business Profile
For local businesses, your Google Business Profile is arguably more important than social media. It's what appears when someone searches "bubble tea near me" or looks for shake shops in your area.
Make sure your profile includes:
Accurate hours and location
High-quality photos of your shop and products
Your menu (or a link to it)
Regular posts about specials or new items
Responses to all reviews (positive and negative)
Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews. Google reviews significantly impact local search visibility, and a steady stream of positive reviews builds trust with potential customers who are deciding where to try.
A Simple Website
You don't need an elaborate website, but having some web presence helps. At minimum, a simple page with:
Your menu
Location and hours
A bit about your story and what makes you different
Links to your social accounts
Information about your loyalty programme
This gives you somewhere to direct people, something to link to in your social bios, and a professional presence that some customers expect.
Bringing It All Together
Attracting customers to your shake and tea shop isn't about any single tactic. It's about creating a complete experience that gives people reasons to choose you, return to you, and recommend you.
Customer service creates the emotional foundation. People come back to places where they feel welcomed and valued.
Your loyalty programme creates tangible incentives. Progress toward a reward gives customers a concrete reason to choose you over alternatives.
Surprise and delight moments create stories and emotional peaks. Unexpected kindness builds connection that transactional rewards can't match.
Your online presence extends your reach and keeps you visible. It shapes impressions before customers ever walk through your door.
None of these work in isolation. A loyalty programme without good service won't retain customers. Great service without a loyalty programme leaves motivation on the table. Social media without substance to back it up creates empty promises.
But together? They create a business that attracts new customers and — crucially — turns them into regulars who become the foundation of sustainable success.
Getting Started
If you don't have a loyalty programme yet, that's the highest-impact starting point. The economics are compelling: retaining existing customers costs far less than acquiring new ones, and loyal customers spend more over time.
With Perkstar, you can launch a digital loyalty programme for your shake and tea shop in under an hour:
Choose a stamp card format
Set your reward (9 stamps = free drink is a proven structure)
Design your card with your branding
Set up optional automations (welcome bonus, birthday rewards)
Print a QR code for your counter
Start signing up customers
The platform handles the technology. You focus on making great drinks and creating experiences worth coming back for.
Ready to turn more first-time visitors into loyal regulars?
Start your free 14-day Perkstar trial — no credit card required.
