Heytea Gelato Lab NYC: Union Square Hours, Flavors and the BOGO Deal

• Heytea opened its first U.S. Gelato Lab+ on Friday, Oct. 16, at 863 Broadway in Union Square, with eight gelato and sorbet flavors made in the store every day.
• Everything on the menu is buy one, get one free through Sunday, Oct. 18.
• The Mango Coconut Sticky Rice Gelato turns the drink heytea launched with LISA one day earlier into a scoop.

Heytea, the Chinese tea chain behind cheese tea, opened its first U.S. gelato shop on Friday, Oct. 16, at 863 Broadway, just north of Union Square. The Gelato Lab+ serves seven core gelato and sorbet flavors and one limited edition, all made in the store daily, next to heytea’s regular drink menu.

The opening came with a buy-one-get-one-free deal on the whole menu through Sunday, and with a line. Opening-day reviews on the store’s Google listing describe waits of three to four hours.

Where is the heytea Gelato Lab, and what are the hours?

The shop is at 863 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, a short walk from the Union Square subway station. According to the store’s Google listing, it opens at 11 a.m. every day and closes at 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and at 10:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

It is heytea’s fourth lab-format store outside China, after Times Square, Toronto and Bangkok, and its second in New York. Heytea runs more than 45 stores in the U.S., in New York, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Houston, Seattle and Boston, among other cities.

What gelato flavors does heytea have?

Eight, made with real fruit, fresh milk and some ingredients you rarely see in a gelato case, such as sticky rice and black sesame. Heytea named four of them in its announcement, and each one starts from one of its drinks:

• Mango Coconut Sticky Rice Gelato: jasmine tea and mango gelato paired with coconut sticky rice gelato, with chewy grains of sticky rice folded in.
• Grape Basque Cheesecake Gelato: tangy grape against a creamy Basque cheesecake gelato, based on heytea’s Crisp Grape Boom drink.
• Jasmine Yuzu Sorbet: dairy-free, with Green Jasmine tea, yuzu, fresh-pressed apple and lime, finished with lime zest.
• “Cement” Black Sesame Gelato: milk, cream and roasted black sesame paste, blended for a smooth texture.

The other three core flavors and the limited edition were not listed in the announcement, so the menu board at the store is the place to check.

The mango flavor has a celebrity tie. On Thursday, Oct. 15, heytea launched its first collaboration with LISA of BLACKPINK, a Mango Coconut Sticky Rice drink with fresh mango, Thai sticky rice and a coconut slush, at 48 U.S. stores for three months. LISA x heytea stickers, pins and keychains followed on Oct. 16.

The partnership grew out of a photo LISA posted in July 2025 in Beverly Hills, holding a heytea matcha. Within days, heytea ran a global buy-one-get-one deal on its matcha drinks.

“What’s special about this collaboration is that it didn’t start in a meeting room; it started with an organic moment.”

Lu Liu, heytea’s vice president for Hong Kong, Macao and overseas brand, to Complex

How long does the heytea BOGO deal last?

Three days: Friday, Oct. 16, through Sunday, Oct. 18, on every item on the menu, drinks included. Heytea did not publish gelato prices with the announcement. Two limited runs come after the opening week:

• Oct. 26 to 30: doodle characters by New York artist Jon Burgerman on limited stickers, mini canvas totes and cup sleeves that guests color in themselves.
• Nov. 2 to 8: Everything Gelato with Tompkins Square Bagels, the 15-year-old East Village shop. It is a cream cheese gelato with everything seasoning, served with a fresh bagel, and limited to 30 servings a day.

The Burgerman sleeves follow the same idea as the store: the cup arrives unfinished, and the customer completes it.

What is a heytea lab?

At heytea, a “lab” is a test kitchen in public view. Each module turns tea into a different form, such as drinks, gelato, cakes or baked goods, and when an experiment can stand on its own, it graduates into a store of its own. Gelato Lab+ is that step for the gelato.

The gelato started in 2019 as a lab module at heytea’s OCT Harbour store in Shenzhen. The first lab outside China opened in Times Square in February 2025, with 10 drinks sold nowhere else, and sold more than 3,500 cups on its first day.

The Union Square space follows what heytea calls an “unfinished” design, with the original brick, the building’s structure and some of its mechanical systems left exposed. “We hope the Gelato Lab+ becomes the kind of neighborhood spot people return to for a favorite,” said Jelynn Jiang, heytea’s senior brand manager for international markets.

Founded in 2012 in Jiangmen, China, heytea created the first cheese tea that year and now has more than 3,500 stores in over 330 cities.

More cold treats and limited menus in Food: Starbucks’ air-whipped Aerocano, Dunkin’s 12 Halloween drinks and the Dr Pepper ice cream float. For more free-drink days, see the National Coffee Day deals.

— Bruno Monteiro

Sources: heytea (Gelato Lab+ announcement, Oct. 16, 2026); heytea Gelato Lab+ listing on Google Maps (hours and opening-day reviews, Oct. 16, 2026); heytea.com (stores page, Times Square lab); Complex (Oruny Choi, Oct. 13, 2026). Photos: heytea; LLOUD.