ChaTraMue

If you've had Thai iced tea anywhere in the world, you've tasted ChaTraMue's influence. The family tea business started in 1925 as a Chinese tea shop on Bangkok's Yaowarat Road. In 1945 the brand ChaTraMue was born, when the shop switched from hot Chinese tea to something better suited to a tropical afternoon: iced Thai milk tea and Thai black tea.

That sweet, unmistakably orange milk tea went on to popularize Thai tea internationally. Today there are ChaTraMue tea shops across Thailand and franchise cafés well beyond it, and the red label with the thumbs-up hand is about as recognizable as tea branding gets.

After opening its first North American shops in California, ChaTraMue brought its first Canadian café to 341 Spadina Avenue in Toronto in August 2025, with Vancouver's West Broadway café following in February 2026. ChaTraMue Canada asked us to design and build the website for the launch.

A brand this famous at home has an odd problem abroad. Thai and Southeast Asian customers know exactly what ChaTraMue is and expect the real thing; everyone else sees another bubble tea shop. So the site had to honour an 80-year-old brand, make a big drinks menu easy to browse, and let people order ahead and buy tea to take home, across more than one store from day one. And, like any good café, it had to make you thirsty.

ChaTraMue already has one of the best-loved labels in Asia, so we didn't try to out-design it. The site is built on a warm cream and white palette that lets the brand's signal red and the drinks themselves carry the colour. Headlines are set in a classic high-contrast serif with italic accents, paired with a clean sans and small, tracked capitals for labels and navigation, so the whole thing feels more tea house than takeout.

Product photography does the heavy lifting. Every drink sits on its own cream card, cup front and centre, label facing out. The homepage opens with an oversized Original Thai Tea, and the menu reads like a well-stocked counter.

The ChaTraMue menu is big: originals, yuzu, a vegan series, specials, honey teas, Thai coffee, Assam red tea and more. We organized it into a row of category tabs with item counts, plus search and sorting, so regulars can jump straight to their order and newcomers can wander.

Tap a drink and the product page walks you through it the way a barista would: size (16 or 22 oz), ice level, sweetness, extra toppings like emerald pandan tapioca or brown sugar jelly, and a note for anything else. A running summary shows your pickup store, your choices and the total before you add it to your order.

Behind the menu sits a proper e-commerce setup. Customers can order drinks ahead for in-store pickup, buy gift cards, and shop a merch store of ChaTraMue tea mixes, instant mixes, tins, tea bags and accessories, all through one cart and checkout.

Because ChaTraMue Canada is growing, the site is built around locations. A slim bar at the top shows the selected café and whether it's open, orders are tied to a pickup store, and the locations section and map grow as new cafés open. The homepage also points customers to the ChaTraMue Canada app for faster repeat orders.

ChaTraMue Canada now has a website that feels as considered as the tea: heritage on the Our Story page, a menu that's genuinely easy to browse, and ordering, gift cards and merch in one place. Because it's built around locations rather than a single shop, it's ready to welcome new cafés as they open, without a redesign.

Bringing a famous brand to a new country is a balancing act between staying true and being understood. If you're doing something similar, see more of our food and beverage work.