Filip Pejic is one of two co-founders of Pearly, an instant bubble tea brand that was launched in February 2022. The company offers bubble tea kits in a variety of flavors – including Matcha, Thai Milk Tea, Taro Milk Tea, Passionfruit Tea and Original Milk Tea. Each DIY kit helps customers create delicious boba drinks in under three minutes.
All of Pearly’s kits are powdered and come from the home of bubble tea, Taiwan, but they do plan on launching loose-leaf tea based kits in the future, once they find a solution that fits their goal of convenience for the customer.
Pearly’s warehouse is based in New Jersey and its operations team is scattered all over Canada and the United States. Pejic is currently based in Toronto, Canada.
Prior to starting the company, Pejic founded a direct-to-consumer sock subscription brand called Society Socks. The brand donates a pair of socks to charity with every pair sold, and it sells a variety of funky men's socks. Pejic’s experience in the consumer-packaged goods world stems from a previous career at Procter & Gamble, where he worked on growing some of the largest retail accounts in Canada.
Overall, Pejic is very passionate about ecommerce and the bubble tea category within the tea industry, and he enjoys learning about technological advances and how it benefits his work in ecommerce. He also enjoys trying out new bubble tea shops that pop up in his city whenever possible.
World Tea News chats with Pejic to learn more about Pearly and to get his thoughts on the bubble tea market and trends.
(Photo: Courtesy of Pearly)
Question: Hi, Filip - thanks for your time! When did you first become interested in bubble tea and what led you to launch your own bubble tea business, Pearly?
Answer: My interest in learning more about tea came when I went off to University. I stumbled into a DAVIDsTEA, by chance, and was fascinated by the selection. Different blends, different types, different origins. It was all very interesting to me, so I dove in.
As I tried all sorts of teas, there was one that interested me in particular – iced tea. I never found a loose-leaf tea that quite hit the spot iced, until a friend suggested I try bubble tea. Coincidentally, a Chatime was just opening across the street from my school, so I decided to give it a try.
While I realized at that moment that I quite liked bubble tea, it wasn’t until six years later that I would go on to launch a business in the space. Throughout COVID, I had gotten annoyed by the constantly rising prices of bubble tea, and I thought, “There must be a better way.”
Question: What do you love the most about bubble tea?
Answer: I love how versatile it can be. To me, it feels like the next step of evolution for tea. You get all the benefits of regular tea, though you can now add dairy products, juices, toppings and more to customize it to your desire.
Question: What are your thoughts on the overall boba or bubble tea market?
Answer: I think bubble tea is still very early in its growth in the North American market. There are so many people out there who have never even tried it. Bubble tea shops are popping up across the USA every day now, and I expect in the next five to 10 years a large portion of Americans will regularly consume it.
That being said, there’s one big barrier to the bubble tea market getting to that point. Cost. Prices for the drink have skyrocketed over the last few years, which makes it a lot more difficult for a beginner to get into it.
Question: What bubble tea trends are you paying attention to?
Answer: The first is bubble tea vending machines. There are a few startups that have raised money to fund these machines using state-of-the-art tech. The second one is large fast-food chains launching their own bubble tea drinks. It’s really interesting to see established players testing out the drink in their menus and bringing it into the mainstream. The third trend I’m following is bubble tea mixes. We’re already starting to see mixes popup at retailers like Costco and Trader Joe’s, alongside DTC [direct-to-consumer] brands like ours, Pearly.
(Photo: Courtesy of Pearly)
Question: At the 2022 World Tea Conference + Expo, Andrew Chau, co-founder of Boba Guys and the author of The Boba Book, said boba is a gateway drink. Do you think that’s true? Do you think that boba will inspire a younger generation to learn more about tea in general?
Answer: I think we’re already seeing it. Bubble tea shops have numerous types of tea on their menu that the average consumer would previously never have been exposed to. They may try a new drink and say, “Hey, I’d like to learn more about that type of tea.” As time passes and bubble tea businesses get more creative, they’ll introduce the average consumer to more and more unique types of tea.
Question: What can you tell us about Pearly’s offering – your bubble tea kits?
Answer: Our goal with Pearly is to recreate the experience of drinking a delicious, refreshing cup of bubble tea at home. We sell DIY bubble tea kits that come with boba balls, different flavors, instructions and optional accessories. Our kits require no prior experience and are ready in only a few minutes.
Question: What’s your most popular kit?
Answer: Prior to launching our business, we did countless surveys and found that people either love Original Milk Tea or Taro Milk Tea. So far, Taro is winning, though I think that will change if we ever launch Pumpkin Spice.
(Photo: Courtesy of Pearly)
Question: What makes Pearly unique?
Answer: We spent a lot of time perfecting our product in two ways – making sure it was very fast to prepare and making sure it tastes identical to something you would buy in store. Bubble tea can take up to an hour to make and the flavor is challenging to perfect. It’s very important to us that when someone has a bubble tea craving, they can rely on us to provide that delicious flavor they know and love.
Question: Do you plan to ever use loose-leaf tea in your kits?
Answer: Yes, definitely as a line extension in the future. For now, we are laser focused on convenience and allowing people to make instant bubble tea at home.
Question: What challenges did you face when you launched your business?
Answer: The biggest challenge was formulating our flavor and toppings to meet our standards for bubble tea. We spent months testing different flavor combinations to ensure our kits each tasted as good as the next. This was also one of the most enjoyable parts of launching the business though.
Another major challenge we encountered was the supply chain. We launched at the peak of the global shipping crisis when shipping prices were at all-time highs. It was a lot more expensive than we expected to produce, transport and ship products than we expected. Luckily this has gotten a little better with time.
Question: What are your biggest successes so far with Pearly?
Answer: We are still a new and growing business. To date, our biggest accomplishment was our launch. We were able to sell out of all of our initial inventory in several weeks, which validated our business idea. We believed from that moment we could build this into something big!
Question: Where do you currently ship your bubble tea kits?
Answer: All across the USA. We hope to launch in Canada next year.
(Photo: Courtesy of Pearly)
Question: What’s been your best marketing tactic for your business thus far?
Answer: Our best marketing tactic has been leveraging organic social media platforms. Our team spends a lot of time brainstorming unique TikTok, Instagram reel and YouTube short ideas and is on track to have over one million views this month. This has led to lots of new customers interested in trying out our product.
Question: What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs or those who want to start a bubble tea business?
Answer: Make sure to take what you love about tea and let that shine in your business. Your customers will recognize and reward you for your unique approach to the business. For us, this meant keeping our bar for flavor and convenience very high.
Question: Pearly also offers bubble tea kits for offices. What can you tell us about that?
Answer: This is a relatively new offering we launched a couple of months ago. It’s something I would have loved back when I worked in the corporate world. We’re partnering with offices across the USA to deliver bubble tea on a regular schedule. Instead of offering coffee or soda in their breakroom, employers can opt to provide employees with bubble tea instead.
Question: Thanks for your time! Last question: What does the future hold for Pearly?
Answer: Thanks for having me! We hope to launch many more delicious flavors and bubble tea accessories in the near future. You also may see us at a local popup or anime convention very soon.
To learn more about Pearly and its bubble tea kits, visit DrinkPearly.com.
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