Lex Eats Local: Boise’s Boba Tea Boom

Taro milk tea, enjoyed at Boise Boba’s Garden City location. (Credit Lex Nelson)

Sage Brusseau doesn’t have a boba tea shop near her home in Star, but she got a taste for the drink in California.

So when she trekked into downtown Boise on a hot July day she had to pop into Boise Boba on Ninth Street for a drink.

“I don’t really like coffee, but I do like tea and I just think it’s a fun twist. … It’s just a good alternative, I would say. And Boise Boba does a really good job of making it intriguing with their art and the menu,” Brusseau said.

Brusseau ordered a cotton candy boba tea, blended, with a traditional “bottom” of tapioca pearls. The Taiwanese drink is generally made with tea, milk, and flavorings shaken over ice. Servers pour the concoction over a bed of tapioca pearls or another “bottom,” like fruit-flavored poppers or jellies. Then, they seal the plastic cup with airtight cellophane. To drink her tea, Brusseau had to spear an oversized plastic straw through the seal and slurp the semi-sweet dessert.

On its website, Boise Boba writes that the starchy tapioca balls made from cassava root are the “boba/bubbles” that give the tea its interchangeable names. However, Amy Wakagawa — owner of Happy Life CBD Bubble Tea & Coffee in Boise — offered a different story.

“In researching the evolution of bubble tea, [I found that] a lot of people thought the ‘bubbles’ referred to the bottom, the tapioca pearls and popping boba. But it actually refers to shaking the drink over ice and the bubbles that form at the top!” she said.

Regardless of its name’s origins, boba tea is quickly gaining momentum in the Boise market.

“[Bubble tea is] certainly popular when summer hits. That’s when I start to think, ‘Okay, I need to hire somebody because all of the kids are coming in,’” Wakagawa said.

Happy Life CBD Bubble Tea & Coffee delivers through Doordash. (Credit Lex Nelson)

Tea Shops on the Rise

When Boise Boba opened its first location near the Eagle Road and Chinden Boulevard intersection in February 2017, it may have been the only exclusive bubble tea shop in the valley — but that status didn’t last. Urban Fox Coffee & Boba opened its doors six months later, just 2.4 miles down Eagle Road.

Since then, both shops have expanded significantly. Boise Boba now boasts four locations (one each in Boise; Eagle; Garden City and Walla Walla, Washington) and Urban Fox added a second location in Boise State University’s Multipurpose Classroom Building in 2021. According to The Arbiter, the boba shop received “the most positive feedback” out of four local restaurants competing for a spot on campus in a university survey.

In 2019, Happy Life CBD Bubble Tea & Coffee joined the boba boom, followed by Tbaar in 2020, The Whale Tea in 2021, and Happy Boba in 2022.

Why All the Bubbles?

Boise Boba’s website credits Southern California college towns with spreading the boba craze in the 1990s, and it’s possible boba’s prevalence in Boise today is connected with the influx of Californians to the state.

Kristine Spencer, owner of Happy Boba, was inspired to open her shop after discovering boba in Los Angeles and San Jose, California, while Wakagawa had her first taste of bubble tea in Portland, Oregon. Both Spencer and Wakagawa also pointed to the tea’s uniqueness and its popularity with teens and 20-somethings. Wakagawa’s demographic skews toward young women, although folks of all ages stop in for her CBD-infused drinks.

“I’m looking for the young people,” Spencer said, adding. “[My customers] are mostly Vietnamese, then American, Mexican, Filipino, Korean.”

Boise Boba’s Garden City location — complete with drive-thru. (Credit Lex Nelson)

New Boba on the Block

For Spencer, opening Happy Boba was the culmination of a decade-long dream. She moved to Boise from Vietnam in 2008 and found a job at Chiang Mai House Thai Restaurant. For more than 10 years she saved her pennies to open a business of her own.

“She had piggy banks, seven piggy banks on the dresser. And when she’d get her tips she’d put [them in] Monday’s piggy bank, Tuesday’s piggy bank … all to go into the boba shop,” recalled Spencer’s husband, Chris.

After losing $15,000 to a scam artist, saving all over again, and spending years experimenting with different boba suppliers, Spencer finally opened Happy Boba on June 15, 2022. Her shop specializes in scratch-made toppings and flavors crafted from unprocessed ingredients, like fresh peaches and taro roots sourced from a nearby Asian market. Every morning she spends two hours cooking that day’s tapioca pearls.

On Happy Boba’s menu, diners can choose from milk tea flavors ranging from mango to grass jelly with drink add-ons like “egg pudding” (a clear, custard-like jelly Spencer makes from scratch) and “salted cheese” (a thick, salty-sweet foam reminiscent of chocolate-covered pretzels or maple-bacon doughnuts). Happy Boba also offers rice-based “foam waffles” topped with chocolate or matcha, and “green waffles” flavored with pandan leaves and coconut.

“I tried all of the boba shops here, and I saw what was missing, and I put it on my menu,” Spencer said.

Her personal favorite drink: jasmine milk tea with salted cheese, classic boba, and egg pudding.

Boise’s Bubble Tea Hotspots

• Boise Boba, 212 N. Ninth St.; 3210 E. Chinden Blvd, Eagle; 6711 N. Glenwood St., Garden City (drive-thru) — A locally owned chain with four locations (the fourth in Walla Walla, Washington) selling creative boba drinks, “fruity teas,” hot teas, and “bubble tea coffee.”

• Happy Life CBD Bubble Tea & Coffee, 1537 N. Milwaukee St. — A locally owned shop specializing in CBD-infused bubble teas (try the one made with fresh Oregon strawberries).

• Happy Boba, 6932 W. State St. — A locally owned boba shop selling milk teas, smoothies, waffles, and more.

• Tbarr, 13601 W. McMillan Road — A New York City-based chain serving bubble tea, milk foam drinks, smoothies, tea, and lemonade.

• The Whale Tea, 1226 S. Broadway Ave. — A Connecticut-based chain offering a variety of boba teas and slushes, including “creme brulee” and “whale crystal” tea lines.

• Urban Fox, BSU Campus; 2970 N. Eagle Road, Meridian — A locally owned boba shop with two locations, serving a variety of boba teas and espresso-based coffee drinks.

Still want more boba? Look for it at Asian restaurants like Yokozuna Teriyaki, Happy Teriyaki, and Nara Ramen & Izakaya, and in the dessert shop Blue Cow Frozen Yogurt.

Did you miss last month’s “Lex Eats Local”? Read it here.

This story was originally published by Boise Weekly. Read the original here.