HYPE DETECTIVE · Unknown

Brown sugar bubble tea: how much more did the hype cost?

After Tiger Sugar arrived, more than ten brands followed and by July 2019 CU and GS25 had brown-sugar products.

Pre-hype priceNot collected
Peak priceNot collected
Current priceNot collected
Cost floorNot collected
Peak ÷ cost floorNot collected
Hype half-life49 days
Operating stores vs observed peakNot collected
Spike → big retail≤77 days

“Not collected” means no sourced number yet; gaps are never filled from memory.

PRICE TIMELINE

How the price moved

2019-03 · Launch · Single source
₩4,900 Brown sugar boba milk, 1 cup
Hongdae, Seoul · Tiger Sugar · 개인 블로그 — 타이거슈가 홍대본점 방문기(2019.3, 메뉴판 가격)

ESTIMATED COST FLOOR

What it takes at minimum

Not enough public price and recipe data to estimate yet.

STORES

How stores grew and shrank

Not collected

SEARCH INTEREST

When search took off and cooled

050100half20182019202020212022
Google search interest (South Korea, weekly, peak = 100) · bold line is the 4-week average · 2018-06-01 2022-12-31
Show weekly values

2019-05-05 39 · 2019-05-12 39 · 2019-05-19 59 · 2019-05-26 38 · 2019-06-02 37 · 2019-06-09 74 · 2019-06-16 66 · 2019-06-23 89 · 2019-06-30 60 · 2019-07-07 50 · 2019-07-14 46 · 2019-07-21 100 · 2019-07-28 94 · 2019-08-04 42 · 2019-08-11 74 · 2019-08-18 69 · 2019-08-25 42 · 2019-09-01 73 · 2019-09-08 56 · 2019-09-22 52 · 2019-09-29 34 · 2019-10-13 36 · 2019-10-20 55 · 2019-10-27 40 · 2019-11-17 56 · 2019-11-24 42 · 2019-12-22 36 · 2020-01-05 38 · 2020-01-19 36 · 2020-02-02 46 · 2020-02-16 61 · 2020-03-15 27 · 2020-04-05 31 · 2020-04-12 36 · 2020-04-26 31 · 2020-05-10 28 · 2020-05-17 27 · 2020-06-07 30 · 2020-06-21 24 · 2020-07-05 25 · 2021-07-18 29 · 2022-01-30 40 · 2022-02-20 25 · 2022-05-01 21 · 2022-10-09 24

Take-off (25% of peak)
2019-05-05
Peak (4-week average)
2019-08-11 · single-week high 2019-07-21
Hype half-life
49 days (half of peak by 2019-09-29)
Latest
2022-12-25 · 0/100

HYPE LIFECYCLE

Lifecycle and timeline

  1. 1. Discovery
  2. 2. Early viral
  3. 3. Search explosion
  4. 4. Price premium
  5. 5. Store expansion
  6. 6. Large retail entry
  7. 7. Peak
  8. 8. Saturation
  9. 9. Decline
  10. 10. Survival / disappearance

Now: Decline · Unknown · Unknown — Search interest near zero by late 2022; no store-count data found

2019-03 · First in Korea · Unknown
Tiger Sugar opens in Hongdae; 30+ minute queues
비즈한국 — 흑당 버블티 인기 얼마나 갈까… 왕년 대박 아이템의 그림자(2019.5.2, 가맹사업정보 인용)
2019-05-05 · Viral / search · Unknown
Search interest takes off (passes 25% of peak)
Google Trends — 대한민국 웹 검색, 주간(키워드별 정점=100)
by 2019-07-21 · Large retail · Unknown
CU (4 items) and GS25 (3) launch brown-sugar products, plus coffee and bakery chains (by this report)
시사저널 — 대한민국 휩쓰는 흑당 열풍, 거품일까(2019.7.21)

At most 77 days from the search take-off (2019-05-05) to big-retail or franchise entry (2019-07-21).

Organic, paid or sponsored spread is shown only when public records confirm it; no business is said to have engineered a fad.

WHO CAPTURED THE HYPE PREMIUM

Who captured the hype premium?

Likely revenue source
Convenience stores — Convenience-store brown-sugar items
Launches confirmed; sales not disclosed
Confirmed revenue source
Raw-material suppliers — Brown-sugar syrup sales
Online syrup sales +31,534% (1–14 Jul vs January), as reported

Only published figures count as confirmed; a clear mechanism without amounts is “likely”. No made-up scores.

SCARCITY

Sell-outs, queues and limits

Pearls made in the morning sold out before 2 pm · 비즈한국 — 흑당 버블티 인기 얼마나 갈까… 왕년 대박 아이템의 그림자(2019.5.2, 가맹사업정보 인용)

REPORT A PRICE

What did you pay back then?

Many pre-hype and peak prices are missing. Reports with receipts or photos are reviewed and shown separately as user reports.

SOURCES

Sources

Last checked 2026-10-02

DETECTIVE RADAR

Brown sugar bubble tea from other angles

  • Origin DetectiveApplies · not analysed yet
  • Cost DetectiveApplies · not analysed yet
  • Distribution DetectiveApplies · not analysed yet
  • Inflation DetectiveApplies · not analysed yet
  • Discount DetectiveApplies · not analysed yet
  • Value DetectiveApplies · not analysed yet
  • Hype DetectiveThis page
  • Hogu IndexApplies · not analysed yet
  • Tax DetectiveApplies · not analysed yet
  • Wage DetectiveApplies · not analysed yet
  • Ingredient Detective (food & drinks)Applies · not analysed yet
  • Regulation DetectiveApplies · not analysed yet

✓ analysed · △ applies, not analysed yet · not applicable: Privacy Detective · All axes on one page