Cha for Tea Imports Taiwan Tea Craze to OC
It’s lunchtime and Cha for Tea in Irvine is brewing with students and workers waiting for their orders, each carefully mixed in a cocktail shaker to the beat of jazz music.
Welcome to the Asian tearoom, Orange County style. Cha for Tea Inc. is a Los Angeles-based outfit backed by Taiwan’s Ten Ren Tea Co. The company has two teahouses in OC, the Irvine shop and another in Little Saigon. The bars are part of a wave of similar tearooms popping up in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere in OC.
For years, Asian restaurants and small corner shops in OC have served up cool, sweet, Asian-style teas. But Cha for Tea is different: Think Starbucks with an Asian flare. The colorful tea drinks took off in Taiwan in the 1990s, and Cha for Tea is hoping they’ll be a hit here, too.
The most popular item at Cha for Tea is tapioca milk tea, or boba, which means “gigantic.” It’s served cold with a chewy, gummy tapioca ball inside. Other drinks include green tea-based “Love at First Sight,” “Thai Iced Tea,” “Green Milk Tea” and “Lychee Cooler.” The teas are sipped through extra-wide straws and sell for $3 to $4. Fans call them addictive.
Evelyne Marks, a Newport Beach housewife, said she comes to Cha for Tea every day for boba.
“This tea is so filling, and it is a big part of my lunch,” she said.
Cha for Tea president and founder David Lee said he is considering more OC locations.
“OC has a good mix of people: Asian, non-Asian, students and high-tech workers,” he said.
Boba is uniquely Taiwanese and new not only to Americans but other Asians. Samidjojo Sastrogunawan, a consultant originally from Indonesia, was sipping a taro cooler with boba on a recent visit to Cha for Tea. “It’s a unique, new-style Asian drink which Starbucks does not offer,” Sastrogunawan said.
Cha for Tea’s Lee is a grandson of the founder of Ten Ren Tea. The Taiwan-born Lee said he came up with the tearoom idea as a graduate student at Columbia University.
“If coffee does so well, why not tea?” Lee said. “I have the best and biggest tea company in Asia behind me, and I know about tea.”
Founded in Taiwan in 1953, Ten Ren Tea distributes products to more than 100 retail stores globally. It counts more than 20 shops in the U.S., including 12 California locations. Hundreds of different tea products from Taiwan and China are sold via its Web site, according to Mike Lii of TenRen.Com.
All the teas served at Cha for Tea come from Taiwan. In a bid to serve only fresh products, they throw out the tapioca every couple of hours.
The tearoom also serves snacks and lunch items, including tea-flavored chicken, extra-thick toast and Green Tea Brittle. But tea is the big draw. The 650-square-foot Westminster shop in the Asian Garden Mall sells 100 cups of tea a day, while the 1,070-square-foot Irvine bar serves 400 to 500 cups daily, according to Kristen Lee, manager of operations of Cha for Tea.
At the Irvine store, non-Asian customers have increased from 10% to 30% since opening in August, said Johnnie Dang, assistant store manager. n
