In 2014, at age 23, Erica Indira Swanson debuted Tea Bar, a small space with a concise menu of quality-minded tea drinks. Portland, Oregon, a land where nothing isn’t made from scratch, counts a better boba shop, too. The concept was a hit, and two years later the trio opened a brick-and-mortar in Queens, New York. On offer, a roster of creative drinks like hibiscus flower-peach white tea and peppermint-cocoa almond milk tea, to which customers could add boba or other ingredients such as chia seeds and aloe vera. In 2013, Mathew Wong, Wilson Ng, and Kendy Ng launched a tea stand under the name Tea and Milk within outdoor market Long Island Flea & Food.
In place of fresh ingredients and quality tea leaves, however, shops often built their potations from powders that involved mixes of tea and/or artificial flavors, along with non-dairy creamers or dried milk. Though today one will find myriad boba beverages flavored with various ingredients, traditionally the chilled drink was constructed from a tea base, to which some added milk along with tapioca pearls. While conflicting beliefs exist as to the tapioca-studded tea-based beverage’s precise location of inception, many will agree that the drink was born during the 1980s in Taichung, a city southwest of Taipei. “When I told my mom that Bin and I named our company Boba Guys,” he continues, “she said, ‘Why did you come up with such an awful name?’ She still hates the name.”īoba, also known as bubble tea or pearl tea, hails from Taiwan. Chau and friend Bin Chen are perhaps credited with jump-starting the better boba trend currently sweeping parts of the country.
“ Boba is Taiwanese slang for ‘boobs,’” says San Francisco–based Boba Guys cofounder Andrew Chau with a laugh.
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