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Celebritea Café

November 10, 2014 Written by | No Comments

Childhood friends Philip Chau and William Kuang grew up together in Brooklyn New York. They always dreamt of owning a business together. After studying business management and finance in Brooklyn College, Chau took a generous loan from his aunt and teamed up with Kuang to buy a business known today as Celebritea Café.

The store opened in November of 2011 owned by Chau’s friends. Chau and Kuang bought the store and became owners in July of 2014. They plan on changing the name of the store to Chau Down Café. The name change will allow them to create a new image for themselves in the neighborhood as they try to build a reputation with the customers. The café is located in a prime location of DeKalb Avenue and Hudson Avenue. The café is only four blocks away from superintendent school Brooklyn Tech and literally across the street from private college Long Island University.

“The area is good. The traffic is really good.” said Chau, “it’s mainly high school kids that are attracted to bubble tea and there isn’t any other bubble tea place around here.”

Although Celebritea Café specializes in bubble tea, they also provide an assortment of drinks including lattes, cappuccinos, espressos and milk tea.

“I’d have to say our most popular drink is the taro milk tea though.” said Kuang.

A small bubble tea cost only $2.50 as listed on their colorful chalkboard menu. Celebritea Café also proudly serves a variety of baked goods that they import in from businesses. They have muffins and cakes but what most customers come back for are the Chinese baked buns. Celebritea Café has partnered with local bakery Bon Appetite in Sunset Park to sell fresh Chinese baked goods. Popular items like pork buns or pineapple buns are available at Celebritea Café Monday through Friday.
“William wakes up every morning at 6am to get the buns.” said Chau. “They are freshly made and delivered before the café opens.”

Celebritea Café is able to compete with other big businesses like Starbucks and Tearrific not only because of the location of their café but because of their dedication to customer service and bubble tea products.

“Our customer service is key. We strive to make customers feel comfortable when they walk in here.” said Chau. “Also our price is good because it isn’t as high as our competitors. And our milk teas are made better.”

“The quality of our milk teas are high.” added Kuang. “Our powder residue is gone unlike drinks from other places.”

Celebritea Café still struggles with promoting the drinks to the general public. Bubble tea has recently climbed high in the eyes of the public but not everyone knows about bubble tea. Bubble tea is a Taiwanese tea based drink that was invented in the 1980s. The bubbles are tapioca pearls which are simply starch extracted from cassava roots which is popular in the South America.

“The Asian community knows about bubble tea,” said Kuang. “but the American community is still adapting but there are enough Asians in this community because of the schools to make us successful.”

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