Yes, our drinks are 10-30% more than the average boba shop, so we'll cut to the chase: our ingredients cost a lot more. Premium teas, housemade syrup, and Straus organic milk are expensive, but it should be noted that we have a lower gross margin on milk teas than the average boba cafe. This is because the cost of certain ingredients like Straus organic milk, loose leaf tea, or housemade syrup is more than the 30% increase in price.

Also, the price of our drinks are comparable to the best boba shops in other areas such as SoCal and New York. Unfortunately, we have been trained in the San Francisco Bay Area to focus primarily on lowest price. We are still regulars at other boba shops who charge $2.00-$3.50 for a drink despite using cheaper ingredients. And some of these places have lower food service standards and sketch business practices that help with driving down costs. We honor the roots of boba milk tea as a street food, so we're not saying all boba places who use cheap ingredients are bad. Like in anything, you get what you pay for.

It sounds idealistic, but we genuinely want to change the way people see boba and tea. In order to do that, we must change the way people think about ingredients and processes. Appreciation for craft and quality are evident in other industries such as coffee and wine. We want to do the same for boba.

We promise our guests that we will always stand for quality, transparency, and doing the right thing. It may mean we work on smaller margins, but we believe it is how good businesses should be run. And our moms approve of this message!

Updated Tuesday, December 29: Due to the rising operational costs and fees from our delivery partner DoorDash, both Boba Guys and our guests will unfortunately have to absorb some of these costs. This ultimately affects our menu prices offered on this platform beginning in January 2021.

We want you to know that the Order Ahead option is still available at all locations and are unaffected by this change.

We want to thank you for your support (in whichever platform you choose to support us) through this pandemic!

We are committed to serving our guests high quality drinks and toppings. Since our start, we’ve always made all of our toppings in-house. Our boba is from our own factory, US Boba Co in Hayward California and our toppings like Almond Jelly are housemade, right there in our stores. We think making everything in-house makes a huge difference to quality and taste and we think our guests can tell the difference as well.

Additionally, our topping prices have remained unchanged since we started Boba Guys in 2011, almost 10 years ago. Since then, we’ve seen our costs increase both in labor and also ingredient costs. We’ve tried to absorb as much as we could, but ultimately we’ve had to increase the prices (starting in April and again at a later date) on both drinks and toppings. We appreciate your support!

This is a very complex question, but there are two big reasons: 1) our ingredients are different from most boba shops and 2) we purposely formulate our drinks for a broader range of palates. We tend to describe our drinks as "lightly sweetened." For the foodies, there's a bit more to it. We have three ingredients that change the taste and mouthfeel of milk tea: Straus organic milk, our housemade syrup, and real tea.

Straus organic Half & Half, when compared to non-dairy creamer, is thinner. Non-dairy creamer is often made with vegetable oil to create the "milkfat" mouthfeel, which can leave that fat-feeling lingering in the walls of your mouth.

Our syrup base is made from real cane sugar instead of fructose, the frequently-used, cheaper substitute. Most shops use manufactured fructose, which is not aligned with our next-level quality commitment. There is an ongoing debate on the merits of fructose vs. sucrose, but our take is that we want to avoid manufactured ingredients as much as possible. If there's a viable alternative like making it ourselves, we will do just that.

Lastly, real loose leaf tea leaves give our drinks a slight tannic taste to pierce through the strong body of the Straus organic milk. Some people like it because it enhances the tea flavor, while others find it "dry." We try to formulate our drinks so it's a fine balance of tea tannins and creaminess.

Yes, we get it. We don't claim to do everything right, but we do believe #TransparencyWins. We had to make a hard choice three years ago when we opened up our Union Square store that opens early in the morning (8am): 1. Start serving boba two hours after opening (10am after an 8am opening, 11am after an 9am opening), or 2. Open late like normal boba shops. Around 11am.

The reason we chose #1 is because the overwhelming majority of people just want milk tea in the morning... around 95% of people just want us to open earlier. In our Union Square store, we had construction workers line up every day at 9am to get a Dirty Horchata with almond jelly. Since our mission is to bridge cultures, we just wanted to get our drinks into people's hands as soon as possible.

Most people don't know that the way we make our boba takes 90 mins. We don't recycle tapioca from previous days, nor do we use quick cook boba. We also sweeten up our boba in a syrup bath, which takes an extra 20-30 mins. It's a lengthy process, but it's why our boba has a rich, brown sugar taste to it. 

We've also entertained bringing someone in extra early like 6am to open at 8am to have the boba batch ready in time. Unfortunately, that wasn't cost efficient, especially given the fast-rising hourly wages. The team member has nothing do for 1 1/2 hours. Given that we also pay well-above minimum wage and good benefits, that's like $20/hr x 1.5 hours = $30 worth of cost. We would serve 10 boba drinks max in the first hour (the majority are coffees and morning teas), so it's barely break-even. We might as well open like other boba shops and serve at the normal start time of 11am/12pm.

Unfortunately, no. Don't get us wrong, we are always so humbled when Boba Guys' fans come to us wanting to help grow our brand and business, but the reason we don't franchise is because at Boba Guys, we choose culture over fast growth and over-expansion. To keep it strong, we take it one store at a time.

For Bay Area locations, please visit: https://www.bobaguys.com/sf-bay-area-express

For Los Angeles locations, please visit: https://www.bobaguys.com/los-angeles-express

For same day orders, we recommend that you work with the store team that is fulfilling your order. We don’t have land lines in our stores so the best option is to get assistance in person. Otherwise please email our Guest Support team at support@bobaguys.com. They will reply to your request during business hours. If you can include your order number, this will help us best assist you!

For future orders, please email our Guest Support team at support@bobaguys.com. They will reply to your request during business hours. If you can include your order number, this will help us best assist you!

For all DoorDash questions, please contact the DoorDash support team. On your DoorDash app, please click Visit Orders → your Boba Guys order → Help to begin the support process.