RIPON, Calif. — A small shop in a small town might make it official that boba tea has planted its flag nearly everywhere it can.
Ripon, a small town north of Modesto with a population of about 15,000, is opening its first boba tea shop "sheBOBA's" in January. Before owners Archie and Sheroba Chu planted their boba flag in Ripon, there was a nearly 15-mile gap between the last boba shop in Modesto and the next one in Manteca.
The trendy Taiwanese drink is generally a blend of tea, milk, black tapioca pearls, and a sweetener, usually sugar or honey. While it’s seen booms in the Sacramento and Bay areas, boba shops haven’t really popped up in the Central Valley with the same amount of vigor.
However, the new mom and pop shop from the Chu's is making up for lost time. They noticed the trend pouring over into the Central Valley with people in town, including themselves, driving to other cities to grab a drink.
“We used to drive to Manteca or Modesto a couple times a month just to go get boba for us and our kids,” Archie Chu said. “We heard the same thing from our friends in town who were driving into Manteca and Modesto for boba, so we thought there might be a market in Ripon for one.”
Ripon wasn’t alone in being without a real boba shop. About a half-hour to the south of the city, Turlock got its first boba tea shop, "Quickly", in 2016. While some restaurants in town offered the drink before Quickly came in, no one had taken the step to market it as a standalone item.
“In the beginning, it was a struggle. It’s still relatively new in the central valley,” said Jack Wu, manager of Quickly in Turlock.
The trendy drink didn’t carry the same familiarity in the Central Valley, so Wu opted to keep things simple with flavors with which people would already have a taste.
“[In the Bay Area] they’re putting cream cheese topping on it. They’re put milk frosting on top of it. There is more tea mixing involved [with] different kinds of tea leaves,” Wu explained. “… the drink has to be simple. It cannot be as complicated as the ones you find in the Bay Area.”
Wu set up shop less than a mile away from Stanislaus State University on Monte Vista Avenue. He says most of his customers are typically teenagers, high schoolers, or college students. In the end, he says a simple approach and good customer service helped earn him repeat and new customers on a daily basis.
The Chu’s are taking a similar approach. However, instead of a franchise, they’re keeping their vision as a mom and pop shop that specializes in simple drinks and community ties to the place they’ve called home for years.
“Dessert options are slim here in town, so we’re hoping that in offering boba and flavored iced teas and ice cream and maybe things like Mochi ice cream – just different things to give people a variety of reasons to come in,” Archie Chu said.
“I think it’ll be more of a simple approach,” said Sheroba Chu. “It’ll be just regular boba, and then we’ll have like the jelly-flavor toppings. It’s just basic flavors like… mocha, taro, strawberry, mango, peach. Those will be our top list on the menu.”
The Chu’s have been working tirelessly toward their January opening, and they're hoping that Sheroba Chu’s experience in running a small business and Archie Chu’s experience in restaurants can help them navigate this new journey.
For Archie Chu, there's also an element of nostalgia amid all the construction and planning for the new business. His parents ran a successful restaurant in San Francisco for 35 years, and, at the age of nine, he was already in the middle of it helping them out as he grew up.
"We have kids that go to school here and we want to be examples to them... like my mom and dad who followed the American Dream and created their own business and raised their kids through it," Archie Chu said. "I want to give them that example as well.”
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