An immigration and business consulting office on Crystal Mall’s ground floor is about to become a bubble tea shop.
We spotted signs for Toppings InfiniTEA, a self-serve bubble tea shop, is taking unit 1620 in the Burnaby mall, directly across from Korean Noodle House.
The windows are covered and the door is taped off, with a handful of coming-soon posters and drink photos showing through the paper.
There is no opening date anywhere, on the signs or online.
The unit itself is the first surprise.
Until now it was an immigration and business consulting office, its green and gold sign still bolted above the covered glass, listing immigration, schooling, recruitment, employment, business and law.
A services office turning into a boba counter is not a swap Crystal Mall makes often.
What the shop will actually be is spelled out in one line on its own website: self-serve bubble tea, coming soon to Crystal Mall, Burnaby. Pick your cup, pour your tea, pile on infinite toppings.
That is the whole pitch, and it is a different one from almost every tea shop in the building.
The usual model is a fixed menu where pearls, jelly or pudding cost a dollar each on top of the drink.
Self-serve inverts it.
You choose the cup, pour the base yourself, and load the toppings without a per-item charge, which turns the topping bar into the point rather than the upsell.
Metro Vancouver has seen this work once already.
DollarBOBA opened in Richmond’s Broadmoor Village in June on the same idea, billing itself as Canada’s first unlimited free topping self-serve boba shop, with soft-opening drinks at $3.19.
Whether Toppings InfiniTEA lands in that price range is the open question, and nothing on its site or signage says.
Location-wise, the bet makes sense.
Crystal Mall and the Metrotown blocks around it carry one of the highest concentrations of bubble tea in the region, which makes a shop that changes the usual format easier to notice than one more menu of the same drinks.
For now, the only firm facts are the unit, the format and a poster asking whether you are ready.
Toppings InfiniTEA joins other upcoming Burnaby food spots including Yang’s Fook Kee, Cotti Coffee Metrotown, and Chayan Metrotown.
For more new and upcoming food spots in Metro Vancouver, take a peek at our tracker here, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
Address: Unit 1620, Crystal Mall, 4500 Kingsway, Burnaby, BC
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