Sharetea Burwood — Restaurant in Sydney

(3.5 stars) When I first started drinking bubble tea or ‘boba’ in 2012, it was something of a novelty here in Sydney. Despite being developed in Taiwan back in the 1980s, it didn’t really hit peak popularity here in this town until the last few years. ChaTime – the first place I tried it - did most of the heavy lifting in Sydney, though in the ensuing years, I’ve reviewed a good collection of bubble tea outlets from PresoTea, King-T and Gong Cha to the super-pretty PaletTé.

ShareTea is another of the big Taiwanese chains with outlets all over Sydney. I recently discovered their candy-coloured Burwood branch when I was cruising the main drag at 11pm, craving something sweet after a fiery hot pot adventure. A little bigger than some of the hole-in-the-wall outlets I’ve visited, ShareTea Burwood offers up stools and pastel-tiled tables to consume your icy beverage.

While at first the array of choices was bewildering, these days I’m remarkably adept at knowing what to order. ShareTea Burwood do help you out with their top ten drinks illustrated on their front door. Their point of difference is their Tiger Tea ($5.50) which combines fresh Australian milk with brown sugar syrup and those chewy tapioca pearls that I’ve grown to love.

Not craving dairy or anything quite so sweet, on this visit I went straight for the fruit teas. Starting with a base of Mango Passionfruit Green Tea ($5.30) I amped up the texture and dessert-like qualities of my drink with Mango Jelly ($0.60) and Lychee Jelly ($0.60), while reducing the sugar to 30%. The resulting drink was sweet without being cloying, though in retrospect I should have knocked out sugar completely to balance the jelly and syrup sweetness. The jellies had particularly nice bite, even so late in the evening.

Passionfruit Orange and Grapefruit Green Tea ($5.30) was even better, and because of the tart grapefruit, reducing it to 30% sugar was bang on with this drink. For this one, I went with the standard black tapioca Pearls ($0.60), and enjoyed their chewy texture. My only critique of these drinks is the tea flavour was secondary to the fruit; I prefer to know I’m drinking green tea. Ice is also fully customisable at ShareTea, and as I pointed out earlier,...

I love share tea as there drinks are very good. Me and my family members every time we go this place to buy drinks. But sadly, every time we visit this place we experience worst customer service. I don’t want to be rude and I don’t like to complain but this time sorry to say, I couldn’t control myself. We are very disappointed with the staffs working this place. The way they take orders, the way they acknowledge their customers, as if I’m getting free drinks. Neither they greet nor they look interested on taking orders. All the time they look upset, playing with their mobile phones all the time, talking on the phone with someone, with AirPods on, doesn't even care when customers are waiting for them to take the orders. When they take orders, I have found most of them are very rude and loud. Even today, I went there with my family members hoping to get good service but we experienced the same bad service. The guy didn't even care, we were standing infront of him. He didn’t even say hi/hello nor took our orders with smile. He was like what you want ? Pay now, thats all we heard from his mouth. We were like whatttttt… he didn’t even ask if we want sugar, ice or any toppings, size nothing. Instead we had to say hi/hello and greet him, we had to tell him despite of asking us and he didn’t even respond. Till now we never got our orders correct. If we ask for sugar they don’t put sugar sometimes they put excess. Todays drinks was yuck, we had to chuck them in the bin. Later on we realise we had to take a picture of drinks to post them with this complain but we forgot. As soon as we drank one sip we just chucked them. Can’t believe why management team is not taking this seriously that why their staffs are like this. Management team you really need to focus on this. We don’t want anything neither free drinks nor anything as a compensation, we just want good customer service. You really need to work out on this. I have seen they behave same with every customers when I visit there. Maybe they don’t want to complain like me but this time it was too much for me. If it’s possible I would give minus rating for the service. I don’t even want to give 1...

0 stars. It's such a shame for the owners, really, as the 2 staff that I had to deal with this early evening were completely incompetent, rude, arrogant, and not apologetic at all, even when they were at fault. There was zero accountability on the staff's part. First of all, the young girl clearly had no idea how to do her job, let alone deal with customers in a basic, polite manner. At first, I was patient with her, as it was obvious that she didn't know how to communicate or understand well. But then she showed a very shady side. She is a liar! My total bill was $12.20. I gave her $50.20 in cash. She short-changed me and gave me $30.20 instead of $38.00. She knew that it wasn't the right change. It's obvious she lacked basic math and poor cash-handling skills. But instead of double-checking with a calculator, she went ahead and gave me the wrong change, hoping that I would not notice. When I told her, she called another staff member who was equally as rude and arrogant, with zero customer service skills, to help her. I finally got the correct change back. Great! Then, when my daughter received our order, one of the drinks was incorrect. The first girl denied that it was her fault and argued that she had repeated the order to us. However, she lacked sufficient understanding of English, and that is why we pointed to an actual picture of the drink when we ordered in the first place. We asked if it already had lychee topping in it, as it was marketed that way. Instead, she changed it to a lychee drink. How can you still not understand when I am trying to make it easier for you by pointing it out in the marketed picture? She is an underhanded young girl who will not admit her mistakes, twice. One with money and the other with the order. When I asked her to please fix it because it was not what we ordered, they simply said, "No" even though it was not my fault. I hope the owners are aware of this type of poor behaviour and attitude. Both staff, incompetent, dishonest, rude, and arrogant. She lacks basic math skills and basic cash handling skills and basic people skills. It's embarrassing and frustrating...