We supply bubble tea ingredients and equipment to cafés across Sweden and the Nordics from our warehouse in Malmö, and the most common question we get from people planning a shop is what the whole thing costs. Here is our honest answer. Every figure below is an estimate in SEK, and the ranges are wide because Sweden is wide. Rents vary a lot between Malmö and Stockholm, and kommun fees differ from town to town. Treat this as a starting point for your own budget, not a quote.
Premises and rent
Commercial rent (lokalhyra) is quoted per square metre per year. Central retail locations in the bigger cities run roughly 5 000 to 7 000 kr per square metre per year, while less central locations are more like 1 500 to 3 000 kr. A bubble tea café does not need much floor space. Many run well on 30 to 60 square metres, which puts monthly rent somewhere between 10 000 and 50 000 kr depending on city and street. Landlords usually want a deposit or bank guarantee of 3 to 6 months rent, so plan for that cash up front.
Foot traffic matters more for bubble tea than for most food businesses. A cheap location that nobody walks past is not cheap.
Company registration and permits
Most owners start an aktiebolag. The aktiekapital is 25 000 kr, and that money stays in the company as working capital, so it is not a cost in the normal sense. The actual fees are around 2 400 kr for registration through the verksamt.se e-service (about 2 700 kr on paper) plus 250 kr for registering the beneficial owner. An enskild firma with F-skatt costs nothing to register with Skatteverket, but most suppliers and landlords prefer dealing with an AB.
You also need to register your livsmedelsverksamhet with the kommun at least two weeks before you open. The registration fee is typically 1 000 to 1 500 kr (Kristianstad charges 1 340 kr, as one concrete example), and after that you pay an annual food control fee based on an hourly rate of roughly 1 300 to 1 700 kr. You do not need a serveringstillstånd unless you plan to serve alcohol, which almost no bubble tea café does.
Equipment
The core machines are a cup sealing machine, a shaker or shake machine, a fructose dispenser, a pearl cooker (or an induction plate and a stainless pot), plus fridges, a freezer and an ice machine. New, CE-marked machines for a single station usually land between 40 000 and 120 000 kr in total, with the ice machine and refrigeration taking the biggest share. We cover what each machine actually does in our equipment checklist, and we stock machines and accessories in our POSSMEI collection.
Fit-out
This is the hardest number to pin down. If you take over a former café with water, drainage and ventilation already in place, you might get away with 50 000 to 150 000 kr for counters, menu boards and paint. Building a food-ready space from a raw retail unit can cost 300 000 kr or more once plumbing and ventilation are involved. Ask the landlord what the space was used for before you sign anything.
Initial ingredient stock
Your opening order covers base teas, syrups, powders, tapioca pearls, toppings, cups, sealing film and 12 mm straws. For a full menu, budget roughly 20 000 to 40 000 kr. Our Possmei price list works on about 20 cartons per order, and the Boba4T range is sold by the carton with prices listed on the site, so you can build that budget line item by item before you commit to anything.
Staff
A full-time employee on around 24 000 kr per month costs the company closer to 33 000 kr once employer contributions are included. Most new shops open owner-operated with one part-timer for weekends, then hire as volume grows. Two full-timers from day one adds roughly 66 000 kr per month to your costs, which is a heavy load before you know your sales.
What a realistic total looks like
Putting it together: a small shop in a second-tier location, taking over an existing café space, can open for 250 000 to 400 000 kr including deposit, equipment and first stock. A larger unit in a city-centre location with real construction work can pass 1 000 000 kr. On top of the opening budget, keep at least three months of running costs in reserve, because the first quarter is rarely profitable.
If you are working on a budget right now, our price lists are public on kottelab.com and we are happy to sanity-check an opening order. We deliver from Malmö across Sweden and the Nordics.