Beyond bubble tea: Yumity’s growth story continues

Beyond bubble tea: Yumity’s growth story continues

When an idea is strong, growth becomes inevitable. The concept behind Yumity, with its blend of Asian cuisine and bubble tea, is no exception. Jim Banks explores how the right partnership has helped the brand to spread its wings.

At the tender age of 20, Leane Schlegel is the driving force behind the Yumity brand, a growing chain of restaurants in northeast France and the first in the country to offer a fully customizable menu combining poke bowls, bagels, and bubble tea. In addition to serving high-quality food, Yumity captures customers’ attention by preparing each dish in front of them using fresh, healthy, and gourmet ingredients. The brand is committed to constant innovation, exploring new culinary ideas while creating a warm, welcoming space for enjoying a meal, a snack, or simply a drink.

“Yumity began as a concept in 2017, then we launched the business in 2020, while I was studying business,” Schlegel explains. “When I came up with the concept, I explained the business model to my father – the simplicity of serving poke bowls, bagels, cookies, donuts, and bubble tea – and soon he, along with other backers, decided to expand the concept.” “In 2024, there was a lot of expansion,” she adds. “Initially, we had two stores with the goal of opening one more. Soon, however, we had four in the Metz region, and another opened in Strasbourg in January 2025, making five in total.” There are many Asian restaurants in France, but few chains have captured the imagination quite like Yumity. Its concept is straightforward, as it focuses on simple, highquality food that is freshly prepared on-site. It focuses on flavor and customer experience rather than an overly extensive menu.

Bringing this concept to life required thoughtful decisions about kitchen equipment. With time being a critical factor, the highspeed cooking needs of a Yumity kitchen demand ovens that are not only high-quality and robust but also versatile enough to deliver flexibility and consistency throughout the day. “For some products, including bagels, we found that we were having to wait too long, so we needed to look for rapid ovens,” says Schlegel. “We went to a demonstration of the Oracle oven from Lainox in 2023, seeing how it prepared bagels, chicken katsu, chicken tenders, and some other products. Now, we have two Oracle ovens in each restaurant.” “Since then, we have also launched the Pause Tomate brand, each of which uses four Oracle ovens,” she adds. “That makes pizza, as well as panini and pasta. We chose the Oracle ovens for their speed, their cooking ability, their size and their flexibility, as well as the fact that there is no odor when they are cooking. And you can use them to cook many different things in the same ovens because there are many different programs.”