What does a 21-year-old's first commercial lease look like on Newbury Street? For David Chae, it ran eight months. It was a test of the market, signed in early June 2026 for the space at 222 Newbury, directly beneath Dirty Water Dough Company, where a bubble tea shop had recently closed. "First-ever lease in my entire life," Chae told the Boston Globe. "I don't even have my own apartment."
His café, byChae, is now one of five tea counters spread along about ninety street numbers of Newbury. Most of that cluster appeared in the past eighteen months. Most of it is also run by established chains, and the one operator that started in Greater Boston is the one working on a deadline.
Five Counters, East to West
Walking west from the Public Garden end, the cluster runs as follows:
- Nana's Green Tea, 175 Newbury St. Opened July 17, 2026. The menu goes beyond the cup to include matcha, mochi parfaits, rice bowls, and Japanese curry.
- Mizu Matcha, 217 Newbury St. On the block between Exeter and Fairfield, open since late December 2025. It serves matcha gelato in strength levels that run from sweet and mellow to rich and bold, plus parfaits and matcha lattes.
- byChae, 222 Newbury St. A pop-up turned café, open since around August 8, 2026.
- HEYTEA, 223 Newbury St. The Chinese chain's Newbury shop has been open since June 2025, selling fruit teas, milk teas, cheese-foam drinks, and matcha lattes.
- Mr. Tea, 266 Newbury St. A smaller tea café and bubble tea shop farther up the street.
At the western end, CHICHA San Chen has been pouring at Lyrik, 400 Newbury, since spring 2025. Local coverage calls it the Taiwanese chain's Boston flagship. The brand dates to 1998 in Taiwan. That corner has its own story, which we covered in our look at how the Mass Ave and Newbury intersection reshaped Back Bay's summer.
The addresses show something a single walk past these shops can hide. Mizu Matcha, byChae, and HEYTEA sit within six street numbers of one another, and the numbering puts byChae and HEYTEA on opposite sides of the same stretch. Few blocks in Boston have three matcha menus that close together.
The One Storefront With an End Date
Every other shop on that list arrived either as an international brand or as a new concept with no announced closing date. byChae came in the other way. Before the café, Chae spent about a year taking his iced matcha around Greater Boston to pop-ups where, the Globe reported, people waited hours for a drink. Those pop-ups included partnerships with Gap, Free People, local Pilates studios, and universities. Chae finished high school in Newton and enrolled at Babson College. Before his freshman year started, he was already running a Korean fried chicken business.
By the time he signed the Newbury lease, he was ordering more than 220 pounds of matcha a month and storing it at his parents' house. His stated target for the café was about $100,000 in monthly sales while he kept running pop-ups around Boston and in Brooklyn.
He has also said that Newbury is not his long-term address:
"I think there's a great community growing there, and a strong global sense. Newbury is a little touristy."
That was Chae describing the South End, where he told the Globe he eventually wants to sign a long-term lease and find a permanent home for the café. So byChae has reached Back Bay's best-known retail street on a short lease, and its founder has pointed to the neighborhood to the south as the place he would like to stay. Readers who follow the South End's restaurant scene will recognize the pull. It is the same draw behind the openings in our piece on Washington Street's newest restaurants.
Why a Landlord Says Yes to Eight Months
The short lease was not a sign of trouble. According to the Globe, the landlord had a gap between the previous tenant's departure and a new tenant expected to move in the following spring. A short-term tenant filled that gap, and the Globe described the deal as good for both sides.
That detail explains how a café with a viral following but no previous storefront got a Newbury address in the first place. An empty stretch between long-term tenants gave an independent operator a chance to test the street before committing to it. The Globe's May 2026 report on Boston's changing coffee culture made the larger point. Rising commercial rents make independent storefronts hard to sustain, even as younger customers look for craft, cultural identity, sweeter drinks, and an experience with their order. On Newbury, chains like HEYTEA and CHICHA San Chen took the conventional route in. byChae came through a gap in a landlord's calendar.
Demand on its own is easy to document. The Globe noted that U.S. matcha sales jumped 86 percent from 2022 to 2025. It also described a new generation of immigrant and Asian American entrepreneurs in Boston rethinking the traditional café through pop-ups that serve matcha and specialty coffee. No published reporting has tied the Newbury cluster to rents, vacancies, or foot traffic. The landlord's scheduling gap at 222 is the only stated reason any of these shops is on this block.
A Season to Try It Here
As of October 2, 2026, Boston Magazine still listed byChae as open at 222 Newbury and pointed readers to its mango sticky rice matcha latte, which is topped with coconut cream. "Boston's having a matcha moment," the magazine wrote, "and nowhere is that more apparent." That listing did not mention a lease extension, a successor tenant, or a permanent site. The spring timeline in the Globe's June report is the landlord's plan as described then. It is not a confirmed closing date.
For anyone in Back Bay who has not yet worked through the row, an afternoon route through the five counters, east to west, looks like this:
- Start at Nana's Green Tea at 175 Newbury if you want a meal. Its rice bowls and Japanese curry make it the only stop on the row with a full lunch menu.
- Continue to Mizu Matcha at 217 for gelato, choosing a strength level from mellow to bold.
- Stop at byChae at 222 for the mango sticky rice latte while the café is still on Newbury.
- Cross to HEYTEA at 223 for a cheese-foam or fruit tea, a different style from the matcha-first counters.
- Finish at Mr. Tea at 266, or continue to CHICHA San Chen at Lyrik if you plan to keep walking toward Mass Ave.
What Leaves With the Lease, and What Doesn't
A storefront is only part of byChae's plan. Chae told the Globe he is slowly building a wholesale business that supplies other matcha cafés and pop-ups around Boston. Once the café opened, it would also sell tins of matcha powder to take home. He has said he wants byChae to bring Boston the kind of tea concepts and experiences that have existed for years in New York and Los Angeles.
That means the Newbury lease may end before the brand's presence in the neighborhood does. A Back Bay kitchen stocked with byChae tins, or a nearby café using its wholesale matcha, would keep the product within walking distance after the counter at 222 Newbury changes hands. Meanwhile, the chains at 223 and 400 Newbury, along with Mizu Matcha and Nana's Green Tea, have no announced end date. If the spring plan holds, Newbury's tea row will stay in place, and byChae may be the counter that leaves.
Newbury Street keeps changing one storefront at a time, and short-term arrangements like the one at 222 show how the street adapts between tenants. If you follow Back Bay at this level, block by block and lease by lease, William Montero would be glad to compare notes on the neighborhood. Let's Connect.
