How to Choose a Bubble Tea Wholesale Supplier in Australia

Most bubble tea suppliers in Australia sell much the same categories: pearls, jelly, syrup, powder, tea, cups. What separates them is not the catalogue. It is whether the numbers on the label hold up, whether the stock is in the country, and whether anyone answers when something goes wrong mid-service.

We have supplied bubble tea shops here since 2013, so we have been on the receiving end of most of these questions. Below are the ten worth asking any supplier before you commit, with our own answers written out so you can compare.

1. Does the listed weight mean net or gross?

Ask this first, because everything you cost sits on top of it. Gross weight includes the tub, the syrup or both, and a supplier quoting gross is quoting you a number you cannot portion from.

It matters most on toppings packed in liquid. Popping pearls arrive sitting in syrup: our tubs weigh 3.2kg filled and hold 2.2kg of drained pearls, and it is the drained figure that decides how many drinks you get out of one. Cost the filled weight and your yield is out by nearly half before you have sold a cup.

Sunwide: we quote net weight, and drained weight where the product is packed in liquid.

2. Does the same weight appear everywhere they write it down?

This is the harder version of the first question. A supplier can quote net weight correctly on a quote and still carry an older figure on the product page, in the catalogue and in the pallet specification, because those get updated at different times by different people.

The check takes a minute. Ask for the same product weight from two places, a written quote and a specification sheet, and see whether they match. If they do not, ask which one is right and how long the other has been wrong.

It is worth the minute because the error compounds. A pallet holds a couple of hundred tubs, so a difference of a hundred grams a tub becomes tens of kilograms of freight on a single pallet, and every landed cost built on the wrong figure is wrong too.

3. Do they hold stock in Australia?

Plenty of listings are for goods that have not been made yet. There is nothing wrong with indent orders if you plan around them, but a three month lead time is a different business from stock you can have next week.

Sunwide: we hold stock in Australia, in Melbourne and Sydney. The Sydney site is for dispatch only and is not open for pickup.

4. What actually happens when something is out of stock?

Ask for the process, not the reassurance. Every supplier runs out of something eventually. What matters is whether you find out when you order or when the delivery arrives short.

Sunwide: we take a back order. The rest of your order ships, the missing line is recorded, and it goes out when the stock lands rather than quietly disappearing off the invoice.

5. Is there a minimum order quantity?

A high minimum is not automatically bad, but it decides how many flavours you can carry. If you have to take six cartons of a syrup to buy it at all, a flavour that sells two cups a week will expire in your storeroom before it sells through. Minimums push new shops into over-ordering, and over-ordering is what turns shelf life into waste.

Sunwide: no minimum order quantity. Buy a single tub to trial a flavour. If you need large volumes, contact us and we will quote it.

6. Can they produce documentation on request?

You will need this whether or not you think you will. Council registration, a retail buyer, a franchise head office and any third party audit will all ask for the same things: an ingredient list, an allergen declaration and a shelf life for every product you use.

Bubble tea uses dairy, soy and tree nuts routinely, so allergen declarations are not a formality here. Under the Food Standards Australia New Zealand code the declaration has to be specific, and you cannot write one for an ingredient you cannot get paperwork for.

Sunwide: we keep ingredient lists, allergen declarations and shelf life on file for the range, and provide them when a regulator or auditor asks for them.

7. How is freight calculated?

Freight is the line most new shops leave out of their costing and then discover on the first invoice. Ask how it is worked out before you compare unit prices between suppliers, because a lower unit price delivered from one warehouse on the other side of the country is not a lower price.

Sunwide: freight is calculated on delivery zone and weight. Because it is weight based, consolidating into fewer, fuller deliveries costs less in freight per carton than the same volume split across many small ones. Dispatching from two states shortens the run for most of the east coast.

One timing note worth planning around, whoever you buy from. From October the third party carriers move into their peak season and delivery windows stop being reliable. Assume some deliveries will run late from then until the new year, and order earlier than you would in the quieter months. A run that arrives on schedule in July is not the same run in October, and this holds whether your order goes out as loose cartons or on a pallet.

Avoid booking stock to arrive on a Friday through that stretch. A carrier can collect on the Friday and still not deliver it, which leaves your order sitting in a depot over the weekend and puts it on your dock Monday at the earliest. Aim for a Tuesday or Wednesday arrival and you keep a couple of days up your sleeve to chase it before the weekend trade.

8. Can they ship frozen, and where to?

Frozen lines such as taro balls need a separate cold chain, which means a separate freight arrangement and a delivery area that is smaller than the ambient one. Find out before you build a menu around them.

Sunwide: yes, to major east coast cities. Frozen ships separately from ambient stock and is quoted separately.

9. Do the cups, lids, film and straws actually match?

This is the question that catches almost every new shop, and it is the most expensive one to get wrong because it strands three purchases at once.

Cups, lids and sealing film are matched by rim diameter, and the sizes are not interchangeable. Your sealing machine is set up for one diameter at a time, so a film that does not match the cup does not seal. Straws are a separate compatibility problem: the bore has to clear the topping, and the length has to suit the cup shape.

Sunwide: we stock 90mm and 95mm cups, and our film covers both diameters. Straw sizes are matched to the cup they are sold with.

Pick your rim size first, then buy cups, film, machine and straws to match. Changing later means replacing all of them.

10. When can you actually reach them?

The last one is not about products. Find out the trading hours before you need them, because most wholesale suppliers in this category keep office hours and bubble tea shops do their volume at nights and on weekends. That gap is normal. Planning around it is the part people forget.

Sunwide: Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm, by phone or email. We are closed on weekends, so anything you need resolved before a weekend trade needs to reach us during the week.

The practical version: place orders and raise problems midweek. A short delivery you report on Thursday gets fixed. The same call on Saturday afternoon waits until Monday, with us or with anyone else keeping the same hours.

A short version of the ten

Working with Sunwide

We stock around 190 products across tea, powders, syrups, toppings, cups and equipment, and we dispatch from Melbourne and Sydney. There is no minimum order, so you can trial a flavour with one tub before you commit a carton to it. For large volumes, contact us and we will quote.

Our full product range walks every category with pack sizes and yields, if you want to see what we carry before you talk to us.

For the account signup steps, approval time and how carton pricing works, see how to order wholesale from Sunwide.

Open a wholesale account for business pricing, or get in touch and send us your menu. If you are still at the planning stage, start with our guide to starting a bubble tea business in Australia.