Boba Guys

Bin Chen

How do you recap a whole year? And how does one start a new decade? Exactly ten years ago, Bin was still at Timbuk2 and I was finishing up business school. We always knew we wanted to work together, but in what industry? Tech? Apparel? Media? It seems like ages ago when Bin and I sat at Tao Yin in the Mission, spitfiring ideas about our futures. We had great careers going for us, but we both felt like we had a different calling. Something was tugging at us, even then. CULTURE IS EVE… (truncated)

Bin Chen

Dear Boba Guys and Gals, Wow, what can we say? This year’s #BallsForAll campaign was remarkable! When we sat down to brainstorm new ways of celebrating the holidays with you all we didn’t expect our final idea to turn out as incredible and fulfilling as it was. Although it was a lot of fun handing out gift cards to our fans in the past, we thought that it was time for us to do something more that would reflect our mission- to bridge cultures- with our local community. Of course, we… (truncated)

Bin Chen

Boba Guys and Gals, For our longtime friends, chances are you’re familiar with our annual holiday season campaign #BallsForAll. In years past, we hid Boba Guys gift cards around SF, LA, and NY as a scavenger hunt over the course of twelve days. Hints about the locations of the gift cards were posted on our social media platforms and fans would search throughout the cities to claim them. We asked that the winner of each gift card treat a friend to a drink to share the holiday cheer.… (truncated)

Bin Chen

Degrees of Separation or Degrees of Connection? You’re at a gathering -- you know absolutely no one except the friend that invited you. Suddenly, out of the corner of your eye, you see someone else you know from a completely unrelated context. During that moment, there’s a level of excitement, curiosity, and connection between you and that person, which always leads to the famous response: “No way! You know so-and-so?” These are the degrees of connection that make the world feel so… (truncated)

Bin Chen

October 6, 2019 We are about to hit our eight-year milestone this week, so we want to document it. (Remember when we all used to journal?!) When we started out as a pop-up in 2011, we never thought we’d get here. It was never our intention to turn this hobby into a fully-fledged business. Now, we have 15 stores, 350 team members, and finishing up our first book— while staying independent from VCs and anything else that would compromise our values. It’s always been about culture. Ove… (truncated)

Bin Chen

EDITOR'S NOTE: Hello everyone, Andrew and Bin here. As two cisgendered males (we're still learning all the terminology so please bear with us!), we knew we couldn't be the ones to write about LGBTQ or Pride. But - to us Pride is about inviting dialogue, bridging opinions and most importantly, creating a space where everyone feels accepted and heard. It’s why we wanted to approach this year not through our own voice, but rather through the voice of our employees. We’ve interviewed a… (truncated)

Bin Chen

Hi all, We want to be transparent and put out an official statement regarding the Kenji story. Here is one of the better pieces on the breaking news: Bay Area Restaurant’s MAGA Hat Ban Not to Everyone’s Taste Given our outspoken stance on social issues, numerous media outlets (and some of our team) reached out to us for some soundbites and direction. We will instead give our full stance... or as much as we can succinctly put in writing. And none of this is a slight to Kenji or anyon… (truncated)

Bin Chen

You’re reading this because you want to learn more about our new cups! Thank you for the interest! So here it goes… Two years ago, we wrote this blog post as a reflection on bridging cultures. Two weeks ago, we followed that up with another post about our thoughts on midterms. You’ll notice that a running theme is our fascination with culture. Over the last year, we’ve been exploring ideas on how to codify our mission to bridge cultures—both for the public and internally. The plasti… (truncated)

Bin Chen

Go Vote! Hi Boba Guys and Gals, A lot of you asked about how we’re addressing the election both internally and externally, so below is an internal email that we sent our team which outlines our plans. For the public, you’ll see us participate by giving out our own version of “I Voted” pins. We know it’s not for everyone, but we hope you understand where we’re coming from. Thank you all so much for the support. We hope we can all figure out a way to work together and reconcile our di… (truncated)

Bin Chen

We made history this weekend with Crazy Rich Asians and want to keep the momentum moving! #GoldOpen has always been about representation, so we are expanding our efforts and supporting two new chapters in the movement: Searching with John Cho and directed by Aneesh Chaganty BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee. The first set of buyouts start this Friday in collaboration with A3 Foundation. Support for John’s movie goes without saying. John is an icon and helped lay the fertile soil that allo… (truncated)

Bin Chen

“A single tree does not make a forest; a single string cannot make music.” - old Chinese proverb   There is little left to contribute to the dialogue around Crazy Rich Asians that hasn’t already been said. The coverage and discourse has been more than the community could ever ask for. It’s a movement. It’s a throwback to the RomComs of yesteryear. And most notably, it’s a symbol of a changing tide in representation in media. That being said, we’ve been getting questions from both ou… (truncated)

Bin Chen

This is a follow-up post to our original post in May.    14,000,605 Possible Outcomes We are here sitting in a hotel room in Taichung, Taiwan in middle of writing our book about bridging cultures. Over the last week, there has been an unbelievably cynical strain of criticism that is sweeping the nation over the now-passed SF straw ban. Friends, family, and fans all over the world are showing us articles and comments about us. Everyone knows we give zero fucks about short-sighted peo… (truncated)

Bin Chen

EDITOR'S NOTE: Hello everyone, Andrew and Bin here. As two cisgendered males (we're still learning all the terminology so please bear with us!), we knew we couldn't be the ones to write about LGBTQ issues but we acknowledged there was a lot to learn and understand about the LGBTQ community, and we're all about bridging cultures at Boba Guys. Two months ago at a shift lead meeting in New York, we were presented with the idea of doing staff trainings to educate our own staff on how to… (truncated)

Bin Chen

Hello all! We are firing up the blog once again. Twice in a week! We want to proactively address a huge piece of legislation that we endorsed / co-signed this week in the city of San Francisco. We know we can't hide our stance on this given the press conference was at Boba Guys! Background Info To catch some of you up, yesterday, SF Supervisor Katy Tang and her fellow colleagues authored an ordinance where the City of San Francisco will prohibit "the use of single-use plastic foodwa… (truncated)

Bin Chen

Helloooo Boba Guys and Gals! What’s good? Today we officially open our first store in Southern California. People often say you need to pinch yourself to believe if something is real. For us, we’ve been punching ourselves to make extra sure that it’s really happening. It still doesn’t feel real. Here’s the full story. (Sorry, there is no TL;DR.) Our Initial Thoughts on LA For those who know Bin and I personally, you know it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. We originally answered… (truncated)