🌊 Bubble Tea Competitor Price Monitor

Scrape menus & prices from competitor bubble tea shops. Built for boba shop owners doing competitive pricing analysis.

Track what your competitors charge for taro milk tea, matcha latte, fruit teas, and more — across Yelp, direct restaurant websites, and online ordering platforms.

✨ Features

• 🏪 Multi-shop tracking — Drop in menus from Kung Fu Tea, Chatime, Gong Cha, Sharetea, local shops, etc.
• 💰 Price extraction — Automatically detects dollar amounts and price ranges
• 🏷️ Smart categorization — Auto-tags items as Milk Tea, Fruit Tea, Slush/Smoothie, Coffee, Specialty
• 📏 Size detection — Flags Small/Medium/Large/Regular from item descriptions
• 🔍 Keyword filtering — Only extract "taro" items, or "matcha", or whatever you need
• 🛡️ Proxy rotation — Built-in Apify residential proxies to avoid blocks
• 🍜 Yelp-optimized — Dedicated handler for Yelp menu pages with lazy-load scrolling

📦 Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
startUrls	array	✅ Yes	List of competitor menu page URLs
maxItemsPerUrl	integer	No	Max items per shop (default: 100)
searchKeywords	array	No	Filter to only items matching these words
proxyConfiguration	object	No	Proxy settings (defaults to Apify residential)
debugMode	boolean	No	Enable screenshots and verbose logs

Example Input

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.yelp.com/menu/kung-fu-tea-madison-heights-madison-heights" },
    { "url": "https://www.yelp.com/menu/chatime-troy-troy" },
    { "url": "https://order.toasttab.com/online/bambu-troy" }
  ],
  "maxItemsPerUrl": 50,
  "searchKeywords": ["taro", "matcha", "brown sugar", "milk tea"]
}

📊 Output

Each result is pushed to the default dataset as JSON:

{
  "shopName": "Kung Fu Tea - Madison Heights",
  "itemName": "Taro Milk Tea",
  "price": 5.25,
  "size": "Large",
  "category": "Milk Tea",
  "description": "Creamy taro blended with fresh milk and tapioca pearls",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-07-05T14:30:00+00:00",
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.yelp.com/menu/kung-fu-tea-madison-heights-madison-heights"
}

Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS from the Apify Console or API.

🎯 Use Cases

• Competitive pricing — Know when competitors raise or lower prices
• Menu gap analysis — Find drinks competitors offer that you don't
• Seasonal tracking — Monitor limited-time and seasonal offerings
• New store research — Scout a location before opening

🚀 How to Run

Option 1: Apify Console (No setup)

1. Go to the Actor's page on Apify Store
2. Click Try for free
3. Paste competitor URLs in the input
4. Hit Start

Option 2: API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_USER~bubble-tea-competitor-monitor/runs" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "startUrls": [{"url": "https://www.yelp.com/menu/kung-fu-tea-madison-heights-madison-heights"}],
    "maxItemsPerUrl": 50
  }'

Option 3: Local Development

pip install apify crawlee[playwright] beautifulsoup4
python -m src.main

💵 Pricing

Pay-per-event — you only pay for what you scrape.

Event	Price
Per shop scraped	$0.10–$0.50 (depending on volume)

Free trial credits included for new Apify accounts — no credit card needed.

🏗️ Supported Site Types

Site	Detection	Extraction
Yelp menu pages	Auto-detected	Optimized handler
ToastTab / online ordering	HTML menu patterns	Generic handler
Direct restaurant sites	Content analysis	Generic handler
JSON-LD structured data	Auto-parsed	Most accurate

⚠️ Limitations

• JavaScript-heavy SPAs may return fewer results (we use Playwright, but complex React apps can be tricky)
• Some sites block scraping — residential proxies mitigate this but aren't bulletproof
• Menu items without clear dollar-sign prices may be missed

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Python 3.12 + Playwright (headless Chromium)
• Crawlee for request queuing and proxy rotation
• BeautifulSoup4 + lxml for HTML parsing
• Apify SDK for storage, lifecycle, and platform integration

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