The Story Behind Bubble Panda

I’m Scott Harasyn… and this is my sister Nathalie.

And this whole thing didn’t start as a business.

It started in our kitchen.

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During lockdown, like everyone else, life just… paused.
All the little things you never think about disappeared overnight.

For me, it was bubble tea.

Something I’d normally just grab without thinking suddenly wasn’t an option. Shops were shut. Nothing was delivering. And it sounds small, but it felt like a piece of normal life had just gone.

I remember saying, I’d do anything for a bubble tea right now.

And then the obvious question hit…

Why can’t I just make it at home?

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So I tried.

I went down the rabbit hole — tapioca pearls, tea bases, syrups, all of it. On paper, it looked simple.

It wasn’t.

The pearls were hard to even find. Getting the texture right took forever. The flavours never quite hit the same. And everything out there felt like it was made for shops… not for someone standing in their kitchen just trying to make one good drink.

It was frustrating.

But also… kind of addictive.

Because it felt like there should be an easier way.

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That’s where this really started.

Not as a brand.
Not as a business plan.

Just a simple idea:

What if making bubble tea at home was actually easy?

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That’s when my sister Nathalie got involved.

And everything changed.

What started as me messing around in the kitchen turned into the two of us figuring things out together — testing flavours, fixing what didn’t work, simplifying every step, again and again.

We weren’t trying to build a company at that point.

We were just trying to get it right.

—

Slowly, it became something more.

Boxes started stacking up in the house.
Family got pulled in — packing orders, taste-testing, giving brutally honest feedback.
Late nights turned into early mornings.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, Bubble Panda became real.

Bubble Panda wasn’t built in an office.

It wasn’t built in a studio.

It was built in a normal kitchen, by a brother and sister, trying to solve a problem that didn’t need to be as complicated as it was.

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But from the start, we knew one thing.

We didn’t just want to sell drinks.

Bubble tea isn’t just a drink.

It’s colourful, it’s fun, it’s something you share.

So we built everything around that feeling.

Not just making bubble tea easier —
but making it something people could actually enjoy together.

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And that’s the part we didn’t expect.

People didn’t just buy the kits.

They made them with friends.
With family.
On date nights.
At birthday parties.
In their own kitchens, just like we did.

—

What started as “I’d do anything for a bubble tea”
turned into thousands of people doing the exact same thing at home.

Which is still a bit surreal, if we’re honest.

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Now, Bubble Panda has grown into one of the fastest-growing bubble tea kit brands in the UK, reaching people across the UK and Europe.

But when we think about it…

it still feels like that same kitchen.

Just on a bigger scale.

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And we’re still just getting started.