Boba Madness: The Exponential Increase In Boba Parlors And The End May Not Be In Sight
When the pandemic hit in 2020, it appeared that it would be an all out disaster for Chinese food eateries of all stripes, from the fanciest large restaurants to the smallest mom and pop restaurants and boba parlors. As I wrote in Menuism, the hit was expected to be disproportionately hard on Chinese restaurants due to the large concentration of family owned businesses. Indeed celebrity chef Ming Tsai sadly predicted that nearly half of family owned Chinese restaurants would end up shuttering. And indeed, this seemed to be a fair assessment as probably a majority of all Chinese eateries closed down for at least a period of time during 2020, and certainly all Chinese restaurants that were operating at any point of time did so on a much smaller scale.
Things looked particularly bleak for the boba parlors. Many observers felt that the boba market seemed oversaturated, and was ready for a shakeout anyway. People not so jokingly were stating that there was seemingly a boba parlor on every block in the San Gabriel Valley. (Probably it was one every other block.) And when the pandemic hit, boba shops were viewed as particularly at risk because part of the business plan of many boba parlors was to allow customers to linger for periods of time to use the shop's Wi-Fi resources and reorder their drinks. With in person dining prohibited, it appeared to be the death knell for much of the boba segment of the industry.
But as I reported in a subsequent Menuism article the Chinese eateries battled back from the precipice. And while a lot of restaurants did have to close for many months, so many eventually reopened that the eventual failure rate was probably no greater than had there not been a pandemic. Amazingly, while there were casualties, many boba parlors successfully pivoted to a takeout model during the time period that in-person dining was not permitted. And more amazingly, new boba parlors began to open. Indeed, instead of marking a period of contraction for boba parlors, the pandemic marked the beginning of a period of exponential growth. Not only was there a major expansion in the number of boba purveyors, but there was actually a shortage of locations, as one Chinese shopping center leasing agent revealed that a particular center in Irvine actually had a waiting list of wannabe boba shop operators. Today, along one two block stretch of Valley Blvd. in San Gabriel, there are already 9 boba tea shops open, with 4 others preparing to open. This pedestrian looking shopping center, Prospect Plaza already has 3 of these shops (two of them literally side by side at the right side of this picture, with 2 more coming soon (one of which is at the left end of this photo).
So for the past five years or so I have been befuddled by the proliferation of boba shops. But a lucky happenstance a couple of years ago seems to have pointed me to the first clue. I was looking for information on a Pasadena boba shop I had recently visited, but could not readily remember the name, so I did a Google search for "Pasadena boba." Well, besides leading me to the business I was searching for, there was another hit for something called the Pasadena Boba Trail. The Pasadena Boba Trail is a self guided two day tour developed by the city of Pasadena designed to take you to all parts of Pasadena to visit 30 different boba shops. Now while it is true that Pasadena is geographically part of the San Gabriel Valley, the fact is that when the term San Gabriel Valley is bandied around, particularly with regard to Chinese dining, you think about cities like Monterey Park, San Gabriel, Rosemead, Arcadia, Rowland Heights and Hacienda Heights, and seldom Pasadena, though Pasadena does have a modest Chinese influence which is on the upswing. So if a city like Pasadena is so densely packed with boba shops, boba has gone more widely mainstream than many of us have realized. And in so doing boba shops have found room to expand by pushing aside mainstream cold refreshment businesses like Pinkberry, Yogurtland and Jamba Juice, whose profiles have greatly diminished (and for that matter, possibly neighborhood bars, too).
Of course this was not the only factor that has propelled boba parlors into a higher gear instead of crashing and burning. In hindsight, boba parlors aren't the same animals that we started to see in the Chinese American community roughly 25 years ago. At one time we were thrilled to be able to order a passionfruit green tea with chewy boba balls in them. But look where we're at now. While there are still some shops that still offer drinks only, the majority of them offer snacks, if not outright meals, along with their drinks, though that was a trend that started well before the pandemic. But what the pandemic did seem to do was permit inventive minds stuck at home during the lockdown to put on their thinking caps and come up with an endless variety of flavors, fanciful designs, mediums and add ons, like this taro swirl cheese foam slushie from Bengong Tea in Arcadia, that makes each separate boba parlor a unique adventure. So where customers used to patronize one or two shops for their favorite drinks, there are so many varieties that people now probably have a whole list of shops to frequent.
Now on top of that in the past year there has been a flood of new contenders, particularly US branches of overseas based boba chains that had never accessed the United States market before. Particularly for those from Mainland China, there is an easy explanation. The New York Times recently ran a long article on how Mainland Chinese food and drink chains are flocking to the United States in the face of cutthroat competition and shrinking margins at home. Some of these drink chains have landed in the United States with price points below the existing market. And as anyone knows, when price goes down, volume of sales go up, so to that extent a larger number of outlets can be supported.
But for all the players to stay in business, there has to be sufficient demand for the product. And while I noted the major factors above, it still didn't add up in my head. Then, after much deep contemplation the answer hit me. When boba arrived on our shores early in the 21st century, while older folks like me might order a boba drink on occasion, the core of their clientele was Chinese and other Asian high school and college students. Part of was that boba parlors with WiFi were attracting these students and becoming study halls. Another part was that historically sweets did not play a large part in the Chinese food scene, as I described in my Menuism article on the rise of Chinese desserts, but these kids in America were used to a higher level of sweets intake than their parents. So at the beginning, boba shop clientele was largely made up of customers say between 15 years old and 25 years old.
But look at what has happened since then. The first generation of boba drinkers did not outgrow their love for boba. Indeed their appetite has grown over the years. And they passed their love for boba to their own children, lowering the bottom end of the age range for boba drinkers. So today the target boba drinking market age runs from probably around 8 or 9 years old, going all the way up to people who are pushing the 50 year old mark. Or putting it another way, boba is for people born in the late 1970s and later. Consequently, so long as the original boba drinkers are still ambulatory, (note the evolution of boba drinks to pretty much universally include no and low sugar options and healthy mediums like oat milk) and people don't get tired of boba, the target market will continue to expand until it includes the entire age demographic.
The expansion in the number of boba shops in the past 25 years is mind boggling. Where we thought that one boba shop every block or two was reaching the saturation point, the boba shop density has multipled several times over. So the continued explosion in the number of boba providers really isn't insane or inexplicable, once you realize the age demographic has expended originally from merely a part of one generation, and is gradually marching on until it eventually includes everybody, meaning continued growth of locations into the future.
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