Cha Time

Not a pleasant experience. I ordered a drink and the cashier would always butt me in and didn’t care what I was going to say or order. If you’re going to hire staff, be sure to train them some manners.

Lines up are long at peak times but are well worth it IMO! I’m obsessed with the Grass Jelly Roasted Milk Tea. I usually get half sugar and less ice with coconut jelly. SO GOOD. Haven’t been able to find roasted milk tea like it anywhere. The parking here can be a bit of an inconvenience but I just think people just aren’t looking hard enough. There’s parking in the back where boiling point is and also HSBC (feel free to park when they are closed).
I feel a lot of people are underwhelmed by Cha Time because there’s really nothing to it which is true. NO FRILLS. CONSISTENCY IS KEY HERE. A lot of other places lack that and that’s why they’re so successful. Simple definitely is key here. I love how they have locations in Surrey, Richmond and here. Although I would avoid the Surrey location…
All in all a good place for bbt! Large seating area and the music selection ain’t so bad either.

I decided to finally try Cha Time because of the hype from friends and social media. I honestly don’t understand what the hype is … It’s just like any orher ordinary decent bubble tea place such as bubble world or Estea.
The only somewhat cool thing is you can customize the level of sweetness and level of how much ice you want. Usually I do this with other bubble tea places anyway but it’s nice to know it’s definitely an option here. I didn’t wait that long to receive my drink (3 – 5 mins) then again I went on a Monday night at 10 pm.
Couldn’t find parking in the front (street parking) so I went to the back parking lot and parked in the HSBC stalls.
Some of the tables weren’t clean but majority of the tables were.
Overall, this place is just an average bbt place, nothing special.

I love Cha Time. I loved it ever since I first tried the franchise in Toronto. I love how you can choose the ice percentage and the sugar percentage and it’s standardized in all their franchises. But what I don’t love about THIS Cha Time is that there could be 5 workers behind the bar but still be extremely slow.
I’ve passed by this new location several times and I’ve noticed time and time again that there was a line up from the cashier at the back all the way to the front doors. I thought it was due to the hype and to the new location — «it must be doing great!» I thought. But I was so very very wrong when I stepped in one night. There were 5 workers behind the bar but only 2 were busying themselves making drinks. The other two worked at extremely slow paces with making slushes. I watched the line up grow for picking up their drinks at the bar with no new drinks coming out for more than 5 minutes, as people in front of us in the line to put our order in the cashier grow restless and then eventually leave when they were near the front. I contemplated leaving as well given the wait. At the end, we waited approximately 20 – 25 minutes to put our order in, and then another 15 – 20 minutes for pickup.
Despite it being my favourite bubble tea franchise, I would stay away from this location until they have stepped up in their wait times and go for Tealips down at Highgate instead.

Love that there’s so many different drinks on the menu and options for sweetness and ice! That’s how bubble tea should be done!