Why Doesn’t Starbucks Have Milk Tea Boba?
Seriously? What is stopping them? This question was brought up by my good friend Kayla. It’s perplexing. It’s thought provoking. It deserves a blog post discussing why.
Firstly, a little background-
- Boba is refers to the chewy tapioca balls often used as a topping in drinks.
- Common types of drinks associated with boba are milk teas, fruit teas, and slushes.
- Drinks come in almost any flavor imaginable. Some of the most popular are: Thai, taro, matcha, mango, strawberry, winter-melon, honeydew, Hokkaido, & Okinawa.
This info-graphic provided by a creditable source illustrates the distribution of boba consumers across the United States. A lot of people drink boba. In other words, boba is a really popular drink.
So why is it that none of the leading restaurants in the U.S. have adopted this drink in their menu? I have a few speculations:
- Boba is too expensive for businesses. Making the drink requires its own equipment, machinery, and ingredients. It might not be worth the cost to integrate those things into your restaurant if your business believes Boba won’t bring a large return.
- Making good Boba is a trade secret. Any Joe-Schmo can make milk tea boba, but the secret to making delicious boba is locked in the industry. Usually family of businesses know the practice, and they make sure they are the only people that produce the goods in their business.
- Boba is not as popular as is may seem. This is simply not true, but I thought I should include this reasoning here because non-believes will try to convince you otherwise. Boba is really popular.
Perhaps the United States is not ready for a national distribution of liquid bliss. If you are a fanatic of boba, then this should not worry you. Change takes time. America took 3 centuries to finally invent the iPhone. One day, we will look back at wonder what took the U.S. so long to unilaterally embrace the boba.
