The Singapore government is tightening its circuit breaker measures for Covid-19. From April 21, 2359 hrs till June 1, more businesses will be required to close, including a number of F&B outlets. According to the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), this covers the “less critical consumer services” like “standalone outlets (excluding those in hawker centres, food courts and coffeeshops) that sell only beverages, packaged snacks, confectioneries or desserts”. So yep, bubble tea shops will all be closed.

Brown sugar BBT chain Tiger Sugar’s managing director, Trevor Fong, tells 8days.sg that he is now seeing a large spike in orders for all his outlets. “There are queues at our heartland outlets, and a lot of orders coming in via delivery. Even Grab orders for our Orchard outlet [which is surrounded by fewer residential areas] are moving very quickly.”

He also voices his concern about safe distancing, which customers still have to adhere to. As the outlets will be open till 11.59pm tonight, he has deployed “around two more staff members” at the shops to ensure crowd control. “I’m calling the staff who have gone home to come back to the outlets for support,” he says. (Note: the main pic in this story is an old one taken in October 2019, and does not reflect the current crowd).

A photo circulating on WhatsApp that we got shows a LiHo bubble tea shop staff with armfuls of order chits (please contact us for the credit if you’re the original owner of this photo).

And yet another photo making its rounds on WhatsApp shows a refrigerator filled to the brim with cups of Gong Cha bubble tea. Pretty much everyone’s dream now. While it may seem like a painful deprivation now, going without bubble tea for a month will help #flattenthecurve so we can all freely go out to buy our favourite brown sugar pearl milk again.