Milk foam has nearly been transformed into a dessert amid the fierce cutthroat competition among tea beverage brands.

The innovation in the tea drink industry can never catch up with the wild creativity of R&D teams.

Following the fierce competition focused on "fruits, tea leaves, and mix-ins", this summer, the battle has finally spread to the very top of the cup — the cheese foam.

From the "rollable kitten top" that Guming spent a whole year developing, to Cha Yan Yue Se placing a whole "cheese ball" directly on the rim of the cup, to Heytea making cheese foam into thin crispy slices in its LAB stores... The once secondary topping that was only responsible for delivering "salty, fragrant and fluffy" texture is being completely reinvented.

I recently tried a series of new products from various brands, and my biggest feeling is that the cheese foam in 2026 is no longer the layer of foam you remember that lays flat on the cup rim and collapses in ten minutes.

It is evolving into a "edible solid dessert", and even the most eye-catching protagonist in a whole drink.

How exactly did this trend of fierce competition come into being? What signals does it reveal about the industry?

01

Competing on forms:

From "flat and easy to collapse" to "rollable and shapeable"

The biggest problem with traditional cheese foam is its poor stability. A cup of freshly ground cheese foam will defoam and collapse if not drunk within ten minutes, leaving only a thin layer of floating oil on the tea in the end.

For scenarios such as checking in for photos and takeout, such instability is fatal.

By 2026, the whole industry has reached a consensus: the quality of cheese foam depends on whether its physical form can get rid of the "easy to collapse" defect.

Therefore, "rollability", "three-dimensional shaping" and "solidification" have become hot keywords this year.

Guming is the most representative player that invests the most resources in this form revolution.

Its "Vienna Cloud Top" was playfully called "kitten head cheese foam" by consumers in spring, and store staff can squeeze a three-dimensional kitten shape on the top of the cup.

Behind this is the process of completely reconstructing the entire underlying technology.

According to public information, the R&D cycle of this cloud top product lasts as long as one year, and all breakthroughs are concentrated in the whipping process:

The whipping frequency is increased to more than twice that of the conventional method, achieving full stirring of more than a thousand times, so that a large number of tiny bubbles are injected into 100% animal cream.

The over-aeration process brings the cheese foam an unimaginable softness and plasticity that it did not have in the past: it is no longer liquid foam, can be scooped out with a spoon, and can even be bent slightly.

Many users on social platforms have shared the method of making this cloud top into thin slices or "cat ears" after refrigeration, and its stability at room temperature can last for more than 15 minutes.

What is more noteworthy is that Guming does not intend to make this cloud top only a limited gimmick for a single product, but directly promotes it to the entire product line as a "basic facility".

Multiple core products including "Vanilla Seed Vienna", "Bitter to Sweet Citrus Latte", and "Double Cheese Matcha" have all adopted the Vienna Cloud Top.

In other words, for Guming, "rollable cloud top" has become a reusable core capability, not a short-term hit product.

Its formula base uses 100% animal light cream combined with mascarpone cheese and natural Madagascar vanilla seeds, which not only purifies the flavor, but also provides sufficient milk fat framework to support this physical form.

Cha Yan Yue Se chose another path: direct solidification.

This year's new product "Lemon Mascarpone Cheese Ball" directly abandons the flat laying method, and kneads cheese and cream into a round ball placed on top of the drink.

The texture of this ball is described as "soft and stretchable", with a solid and rich cheese flavor after being broken, forming a collision of liquid and solid with the fresh gardenia green tea or lemon tea below.

This design not only avoids the problem of collapse, but also naturally creates a sense of ritual that "eat the cheese ball first, then drink the tea", which also gives full play to its social attributes.

A limited product launched by Heytea at the Lab store in Fengshengli, Shanghai, further expands the form boundary of cheese foam.

The top of "Vetiver 3" is pecan froth cloud top, sprinkled with brown rice tea for decoration, which is fluffy and three-dimensional like a hill; The most extreme part is that the brand makes the cheese foam into thin crispy slices, which can be rolled and folded, paired with dark chocolate tea base, turning the cheese foam into a small dessert that can be eaten separately.

At present, this innovation is only placed in high-end stores, but the direction is clear: cheese foam has become an independent "dessert unit" in drinks, no longer just an accessory to flavor.

The semi-cooked cheese foam of Chabaidao also reflects this trend. Its texture is artificially adjusted to be relatively thick, close to the consistency of ice cream or pudding, and can be eaten with a spoon.

After turning milk tea into dessert-oriented products, the consumption experience of a cup of milk tea is upgraded from simply "quenching thirst" to "satisfying cravings", and the unit price and sense of value are also improved accordingly.

02

Competing on raw materials:

Saying goodbye to cheese foam powder, with flavors moving towards high-end and differentiation

The shape of cheese foam is its skeleton, and the raw materials of cheese foam are its flesh and blood. Another major aspect of the fierce competition in the cheese foam track is that both the base and the flavor are becoming more high-end.

Cheap cheese foam powder is being cleared out of the market at an accelerated pace.

100% animal light cream, mascarpone cheese, cream cheese and other similar raw materials have become the flagship products of leading brands and supply chain enterprises.

Anchor Professional Dairy launched the "Cheese Foam Flavor Wheel" together with OEM factories at the exhibition, and all solutions use grass-fed light cream as the base material. Such transformation represents that the entire industry is regaining consumers' trust with "clean labels" and "real milk fat".

The "100% animal cream" of Guming's Vienna Cloud Top, and the mascarpone cheese used in Heytea's "Salty Cheese Cloud Top" are all sending the same message to the market: for high-quality cheese foam, using real raw materials is the minimum requirement.

Flavor innovation is no longer limited to the single salty cheese flavor, but blossoms in all directions. The "Cheese Foam Flavor Wheel" divides the five currently popular flavors into five categories: cheese flavor, fermented flavor, floral and fruity flavor, nut flavor, and tea and coffee flavor.

It basically summarizes the four popular tracks of the cheese foam flavor battle this year:

The first category is advanced nutty aroma, represented by pistachio, pecan and black sesame.

The jasmine milk white pistachio cheese foam mixes nut paste into the cheese foam, presenting a fresh green color and rich nutty aroma, which gives a strong sense of spring and summer, and comes with a high-value label by default.

The second category is fresh floral and fruity aroma, including rose, pomelo flower, jasmine flavored cheese foam and so on.

The core value of this flavor is "brightening", using floral aroma to neutralize the greasiness of milk fat, so that the cheese foam can be paired with more refreshing tea bases or fruit teas.

The third category is salty-sweet contrast style, which is an upgraded version of cheese foam.

Heytea's "Sauce Flavored Butter", Guming's "Mushroom Cloud Top", and Taike Tea Garden's "Salty French Cheese" all achieve a more complex salty-sweet impact effect through different types of cheese, as well as niche flavors such as sauce aroma and mushroom aroma.

The fourth category is Chinese tea flavored cheese foam, such as Cha Yan Yue Se's "Dripping Hill" and Bawangchaji's "Longjing Brown Rice Cheese Foam", which directly integrate tea powder or tea soup into the cheese foam to achieve the "unity of tea and milk", which exactly caters to current consumers' pursuit of authentic tea taste.

There is also a relatively new segment called "fermented sour taste".

The natural sour taste contained in yogurt can remove greasiness in summer.

Bawangchaji's Strawberry Cloud Top Dahongpao and Mango Cloud Top Dahongpao innovatively use yogurt flavored cloud top; Luckin Coffee and JPG coffee also add yogurt foam to their coffee products.

Such a relatively light taste breaks the inherent impression that cheese foam is "heavy", which is the embodiment of the "lightweight" trend of cheese foam.

03

Competing on craftsmanship:

From relying on manual experience to locking quality with equipment and standardized processes

Once the production of cheese foam becomes more complex, a cruel problem emerges: the creativity is in the R&D lab, but the product may fail completely in physical stores.

While Guming's "kitten cheese foam" went viral on the internet, some consumers complained that the foam they received had already collapsed and softened, directly questioning the brand for "false publicity". This points to the most fatal flaw of cheese foam innovation — unstable product output.

In 2026, leading brands are investing in refined craftsmanship and equipment to solve this problem.

The standardization of craftsmanship is first reflected in the refined control of the whipping process.

In the past, when making cheese foam, there was only one sentence in the operation manual: "whip until the texture is fluffy and dense".

The difference now is that the exact duration of low-speed whipping and high-speed whipping, the temperature after whipping, and the standing time all have precise standards accurate to the second and degree.

Guming's "thousand-time whipping" is the best example, which makes air integrate