Milk Tea Lab

The vendor opportunity at Milk Tea Lab

Milk Tea Lab is a quick-service restaurant concept headquartered in California with 8 company-owned units as of its 2023 Franchise Disclosure Document. No franchised locations are reported, and year-over-year unit growth is not disclosed. The brand does not publish an average unit volume, so vendors cannot benchmark potential deal size against system-wide sales. For a software vendor, the total addressable market is exactly those 8 locations, all controlled from a single headquarters. This is a small, concentrated account where a single deal can cover the entire system.

Who controls software purchasing

The 2023 FDD lists two executives in Item 1: KaMan Loi, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, and Wai Ha Ha, Chief Financial Officer and Co-Founder. In a chain of this size, these two individuals are the de facto technology buyers. There is no CIO, CTO, or VP of IT named in the filing, and no operator footprint is mapped in our corpus. Vendors should expect a direct, relationship-driven sales process targeting the CEO and CFO. The absence of a franchised operator base means there is no multi-unit owner layer to navigate; all software decisions are centralized at HQ.

Mandated and current tech stack

Milk Tea Lab’s 2023 FDD mandates a web-based POS system. No specific vendor is named, and no other operational or back-office technology mandates appear in the disclosure. This creates a dual opportunity: vendors can either pitch a replacement POS that meets the web-based requirement or offer complementary tools that integrate with the existing POS. Because the brand is small and company-owned, a pilot across all 8 units is feasible and can serve as a proof of concept for a system-wide rollout.

Procurement, renewals, and timing

Item 8 of the FDD, which typically outlines procurement and purchasing restrictions, contains no extract in our data. This means the designated-supplier or approved-supplier model is not publicly known. Vendors will need to ask directly during discovery whether Milk Tea Lab restricts purchasing to specific vendors or allows open sourcing. On the renewal side, Item 17 describes a 10-year initial term with renewal conditions that include giving notice, signing a new agreement, remodeling, and paying a renewal fee. With only 8 company-owned units and no disclosed franchised growth, there is no predictable franchise-sales-driven contract cycle. Software contract windows are likely driven by internal HQ budget cycles or technology refresh initiatives rather than franchise agreement expirations.

How to read the Milk Tea Lab FDD

The 2023 FDD is the most recent filing available and provides the foundational data points used in this analysis. It confirms the 8-unit, company-owned structure, the executive team, the 10-year term, and the web-based POS mandate. It also reveals what is not disclosed: no AUV, no royalty rate, no named POS vendor, no procurement model, and no operator footprint. For vendors, the FDD is a starting point for a conversation with KaMan Loi and Wai Ha Ha about how technology supports their 8 locations today and where they plan to invest next. To see a ranked target list of franchise systems that match your software category, reach out to FranCloud.