Twilight Bubble Tea
Saturday, December 1, 2012 at 9:00 yes, really...
This summer, McDonalds in Germany joined the bubble tea trend. According to fellow blogger PapaScott (who, with his wife, has 4 McDonalds in Germany), Germany is the first place in Europe to roll out the bubble tea and one of the few places that produces their own boba and jelly.
To be honest, I'm a bit puzzled by all this bubble tea madness. If I walked 10 minutes in each direction from my house, there are at least 10 places to buy bubble tea. I get selling it at McDonalds or another place where there's an established business, but why all these places that just sell bubble tea? And how can they survive? Well, they're starting to close.... no way they could all make it through the year or through winter. Especially when we saw so many discarded cups this summer with the boba in the bottom. I'm just not sure how many people here really like bubble tea in its traditional milky, supersweet and artificially colored form. To be fair, I've only had it in Asia, so perhaps it's been adapted to the local tastes a bit.
So, when we saw Twilight Bubble Tea, we just had to try it. When bubble tea and Twilight come together, it makes me think that maybe I should head to that mountain in France where the aliens will save the true believers from the Mayan apocalypse...and with a drink named after a vampire and a cup full of blood cell looking things, of COURSE we had to try it! And, I'll admit the results surprised me.
The first thing is choosing your drink. The choices are:
Edward - Hibiscus tea + cherry flavoring + cola boba
Bella - White tea + vanilla flavoring + cola/strawberry boba mix
Jacob - White tea + green apple flavoring + strawberry boba
I was expecting a pre-packaged drink where they just puncture the foil with the straw or something, but McDonalds put a lot of effort into it. Our barista mixed the tea and flavoring in a blender and filled the cup with the boba.
(For those of you not familiar with the McCafe, many McDonalds in Germany include McCafe areas where you can get coffee drinks and pastries. The prices are a bit cheaper than Starbucks, and it's a good mix of American treats and convenience with European cafe culture. They were one of the first to promote cupcakes in Germany and now offer donuts. 
Since we find Bella annoying and the cherry and green apple looked best, we decided to try a Jacob and an Edward. And a chocolate chip cookie.
The tea was room temperature, so would have been better a little colder, but it had a good taste. Not at all what I expected. It was more like a lightly sweetened tea than the usual cloying sweet stuff. Very refreshing. The Edward actually tasted like a melted cherry cola Icee and the Jacob's green apple flavor was a nice subtle green apple rather than a super sweet Jolly Rancher or green apple martini version.
The boba were a little funny - rather than chewy jellies, they were like giant caviar filled with sweet syrup. They pop in your mouth, which is kind of an odd feeling. I kind of liked them (at least compared to the more traditional milk tea jellies), though Herr J was not such a big fan. But he hates pulp in his orange juice, so he's not likely to enjoy something that's like pulp on steriods...
Anyway, glad we tried them. I'd probably order the tea alone if they offered it, but the boba are more of a novelty than something to consume regularly.
Frau A ... 6 Comments 
Reader Comments (6)
Well that was a nice post. But I have to let you in on a secret... the Twilight Bubble Tea promotion is Bubble Tea's last hurrah at German McDonald's. When the promotion ends just before Christmas, bubble tea will be removed from the menu.
Bubble tea for McDonald's was star-crossed from the very beginning. At launch there wasn't enough stock, so all the advertising for the launch was pretty much wasted Then came all the negative health reports about bubble tea in the German media. Bubble tea was a trend we managed to jump on just as the bottom dropped out. Right now we're having enough challenges in our core business (rising food costs, rising energy costs, flat demand, extremely price-sensitive consumers) so as operators we can't really afford to stick with an unprofitable niche, so we're not all that disappointed with McDonald's decision to drop the product completely.
So thanks for documenting bubble tea's last hurrah! :-)
You got lucky. I tried to take a photo and got yelled at by the staff. =P
Nice post though. You should go to Asia. It's all the rage there.
Thanks, Scott - it's fascinating to hear the inside perspective. I was actually planning to ask you how Bubble tea had fared here. I've been so curious about it all year, given the number of shops that have popped up in Munich....what the demand actually was, or if it lasted. Especially since I didn't think the rich and artificially sweet flavor of bubble tea (at least as I knew it in Asia) was really in line with European tastes. I'm just curious how many of these shops that are primarily bubble tea shops will survive something so trendy. We'd thought that if anyone could make it work, McDonalds might since there bubble tea isn't their main draw and they can easily remove it from the menu. But I didn't realize how much costs went into the marketing.
All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by the Twilight Bubble tea - if they served the tea itself without the boba, I'd order it. It's pretty refreshing and not too sweet!
Hope you and your family have a happy holiday season!
RW, we'll definitely try it next time we get back there. I tried it in China, but that was about 10 years ago and I must admit the memory is a little fuzzy. It would be interesting to compare today and also to see if it's different in Europe than in Asia.
Haha that's so funny! I don't drink bubble tea very often but I do notice that it's pretty popular here! The Twilight ones at Mcdonalds look hilarious! I'll have to try one for jokes :P
That is ten kinds of creepy.
The bubble tea places seem to have come and a few already gone within months in Freiburg. We were sitting at a place next door to one for lunch once. Three kids came out obviously with their first ever bubble tea's. They try it and scowl and pretty much toss them out. What a weird trend.