My mom is from Taiwan, so I grew up drinking boba (bubble tea) every so often. I grew up in the Bay Area, where boba is super good and competitive, so I probably got spoiled.
In any case, I had the desire to work at a boba shop for an extremely long time — since 2016. In fact, before I moved out of the Bay Area to NYC at the end of that year, I had emailed a bunch of boba shops that I love in the bay to see if they were looking for part-time employees, not knowing that I was about to move. A few responded but then by that time, I knew I was going to move so I never got too far in the process.
When I moved to NYC, I looked for boba shops to work at about a year after I got there. There weren’t many, but I did get to work at a super popular and cute cafe with delicious deserts for about 2 months. I left NYC after that.
7 years later, I lived in Nashville for 4 months for work, and when I got there, I decided that since I’ll actually be in a single place for an extended amount of time (I was nomadic for more than 3 years by this point), I should look for some boba shops to work at.
When I started looking, I didn’t know whether I’d actually do it. I really care about working at a place where I support the product, and being in the south, Nashville isn’t exactly known for boba (or Asian food generally). I had gotten boba in a shop during my first (or second, forgot) ever visit to Nashville, and it was just okay. But at least it was decent!
I cold emailed there along with two other boba shops that seemed to have high-quality ingredients. One got back to me extremely quickly, and we set up an interview 5 days after I moved to Nashville. The boba shop had a tent at a farmer’s market, and that’s where I went to interview.
Upon arriving, it’s a bit of an understatement to say I was mildly shocked that the person owning the shop was not Asian. Being Nashville, I probably should’ve expected that, but I didn’t. I had a chat with the owner and the general manager, and I learned more about the boba shop. The owner told me they source the tea from Taiwan, and a lot of the ingredients are made in-house and of high-quality. I was then offered a drink, and I chose matcha which in hindsight probably wasn’t the best choice because it’s not going to tell me how good the tea is.
I remember during the interview, I was pretty cagey about how many hours I wanted to work. The owner asked me how many hours I wanted to work, and I responded with how many hours people usually work. The general manager asked me basically the same, and he asked if I wanted more than 30 hours? From that question, I think both were concerned that they couldn’t give me enough hours while I was over here concerned I wouldn’t take enough hours. I thought that was funny.
In any case, I got the offer to do it, but I had to think about it. There were tradeoffs of time — I didn’t exactly know how time-consuming teaching at university would be since this was before my semester started, I wanted to play volleyball and maybe attend running clubs, and I definitely wanted to meet people. I really didn’t want working at a boba shop to cover meeting people, and at the rate I was meeting people, it’s going to be hard to keep that up and do this as well. I also wanted to check out more volleyball open gyms.
In talking to my best friend about working at a boba shop (she lives in the US but is from Taiwan and drinks it daily), I realized I’ve wanted to work at a boba shop for 7 years. That is a long time for me to want to do something and not do it. Realizing so made me decide to take the opportunity, because I finally can and have an offer for it.
I started off working at the farmers market and out of the shop because that’s where they needed people. I find making boba so fun, and there were so many flavors too! I was very happy working this job, and I was excited every time I got to go work there.
The environment was super light and friendly too, and I really liked all the people I interacted with during my time working there. I got to try all the teas and toppings too eventually, and the ingredients and tea are indeed extremely high-quality.
After the farmers market season ended, I started working inside the shop more. It was a lot more quiet and much less busy, but I still enjoyed it. I observed and learned how much work it is to run a boba shop, and there are so, so, so many details — from ingredients, to employees, to scheduling, to marketing. Wow.
I was asked why I wanted to work at a boba shop during the interview, and I hadn’t really thought about it before. On the spot, I said I love boba since I grew up drinking it, and I want to try working in hospitality. These were both true, but I don’t think I really knew. It was just a feeling I had for a long time.
But on the job, I realized why. Serving boba makes people happy — customers are coming in essentially getting a dessert drink. There were also people who have never encountered boba before, and introducing this entirely new concept to them is extremely satisfying (assuming they enjoy it!).
I would have loved to work at the boba shop for longer, but alas, I left Nashville after a few months. I definitely will like to work at one again in the future, and I’m grateful that I finally got the chance to do this and had great fun doing it!
