There is something wrong with this business concept. It's a milk tea store, but don't have any drinks with actual Milk. No cow milk, oat milk, almond milk, soy milk, rice milk, or coconut milk. Absolutely none.
ALL of their "milk" drinks are made with "non-dairy creamer", and since most non-dairy creamers use a brand which the main ingredients is sodium caseinate or calcium caseinate, I was concerned. However, the owner replied to my original review and confirmed that they use a coconut-powder creamer, so I've edited my review to be accurate. The fact remains that they still don't use any sort of Milk in their drinks. It's all processed powder.
Second, their most popular drink, the Brown Sugar Milk, does not contain tea. It's not "Brown sugar milk tea", it's just "Brown sugar milk" (with no milk).
So just to clarify, this is a milk tea store whose most popular drinks have neither milk, nor tea in them! What!?
How about the flavor? It was decent. Clearly artificially flavored. Also, I love sweet flavors and have a much higher tolerance for sweetness than most people, but their 100% default sweetness was sickly sweet by the time the syrup fully dissolved into the water. 40% of the drink was inedible due to this.
The tapioca pearls aka "boba" were nicely cooked and soft. However, they were drenched in sweet syrup.
So in summary, I paid $6.50 for a large cup of water, CoffeeMate, and brown sugar syrup with tapioca on the bottom.
The service: very average. Nothing special like the reviews are clamoring about. I wasn't treated with any extra level of friendliness. It was just "bleh" level service.
Would I come back? Definitely not for their fake "milk" and no-tea drinks. I would have to drink one of their fruit beverages, I guess. But I'm not very excited about coming back.
The interior wasn't very clean. The clear plastic guard felt like covid era stuff. It was filthy with fingerprints, smudges, goop, and other grossness. They really need to clean that clear plastic wall. There were also boxes stacked in the corner as if the front of house is a storage.
The ice chest had its lid wide open for the entire time I was there, so flies, dust and whatever can just drop in to the ice and therefore into your drinks.
The staff didn't wear any kind of food prep gloves. They stick their bare hands into the ice chest, powder boxes, and tapioca pearl bin. Unsanitary.
Overall, I was extremely underwhelmed.
Don't trust the reviews. 95% of them are fake/incentivized. They have a big sign that says "free cookie for Yelp/Google review"... so obviously people are leaving positively-biased reviews just to get a freebie. I mean seriously: who would leave a negative or slightly critical review and then show it to the staff, asking for a free cookie?
This is a violation of Yelp's and Google's policy on sponsored reviews...
I don't like when companies mess up the honest review system that Yelp is based on!
1 star for the aformenioned reasons.
Update after owner's initial reply:
I appreciate him clarifying about their creamer, but find it interesting that these other points were ignored. I've updated my review and added another star. read more