Sweet Boba HouseThe full campaign

A boba menu can look like a lot. It’s really just five choices, and most of them have a sensible default.

1. Pick a base

2. Choose a flavor

Taro and brown sugar are the most popular first orders. Fruit flavors like mango and strawberry work best in fruit teas and slushes. Seasonal flavors rotate every quarter, so check the board.

3. Set the sweetness

Most shops let you choose 0, 25, 50, 75 or 100% sweet. Start at 50% if you’re unsure. Keep in mind that pearls are usually soaked in brown sugar syrup, so even a 0% drink with pearls has some sweetness. See How Sweet Should You Go?.

4. Choose your ice

Regular ice keeps the drink cold longest. Light ice gets you more drink. No ice works best for milk teas you plan to finish right away.

5. Add toppings

Tapioca pearls are the classic. You can also add popping boba, jellies or a cream cap, or combine two. Each topping adds a small charge, listed right on the menu. Here’s every topping, explained.

Why we list every price

Customization is the whole point of boba, so we keep the cost of each choice visible on the menu board, the website and the delivery apps. What you build is what you pay.

A few combinations to start with

• Taro milk tea · 50% · regular ice · pearls
• Mango fruit tea · 25% · light ice · popping boba
• Brown sugar milk · 50% · no ice · pearls

Pearls get the attention, but toppings are where you make a drink yours.

Tapioca pearls

Made from tapioca starch (from the cassava root), cooked until chewy and soaked in brown sugar syrup. Soft outside, bouncy inside. They’re best fresh, which is why shops cook them in batches throughout the day.

Good in: milk teas, brown sugar drinks, hot drinks.

Popping boba

Small spheres with a thin, gel-like skin and juice inside. They burst when you bite them. The skin is formed with a seaweed-based ingredient (sodium alginate), so they’re not chewy like tapioca at all.

Good in: fruit teas and slushes. Try strawberry popping boba in a strawberry or mango drink.

Jellies

Cubes or strips of flavored jelly, like lychee, coconut or rainbow. They’re softer than pearls and slide up the straw easily. Many are made with konjac, agar or coconut, but recipes vary, so ask if you avoid gelatin.

Good in: fruit teas, slushes, punch-style drinks.

Cream cap

A thick, lightly sweet foam spooned over the top of the drink. Sip it through the lid opening or stir it in for a creamier drink. Usually contains dairy.

Good in: milk teas, matcha, seasonal specials.

How many toppings?

One or two is the sweet spot. More than that and the straw starts doing a lot of work. If you’re splitting a drink, get one chewy topping and one popping one.

Every topping and its price is listed on our menu board. Not sure what to add? Ask for a taste of the popping boba.

The base decides most of what a boba drink tastes like. Here’s how to choose.

Milk tea

Brewed tea with milk or a milk alternative. Smooth and creamy, with the tea flavor coming through. Classic milk teas are made with black tea; matcha and Thai tea are popular variations.

Pick it if: you like lattes, chai or anything creamy.

Fruit tea

Brewed tea shaken with fruit flavor and ice. Lighter, brighter and usually more refreshing than milk tea. Fruit teas often use green or jasmine tea as the base.

Pick it if: you like iced tea, lemonade, or want something lighter on a hot day.

Slush or smoothie

Blended with ice into a frozen, spoonable drink. Feels more like a dessert. Some slushes have no tea at all.

Pick it if: you want a treat, or you’re ordering for kids.

Still deciding?

Get a boba flight and try four at once.

Most boba shops let you set the sweetness of your drink. It’s one of the best parts of ordering boba, and one of the most confusing.

What the percentages mean

The percentage is how much of the standard sweetener goes into your drink. 100% is the full recipe. 50% is half. 0% means no added syrup in the drink itself.

The pearl factor

Tapioca pearls are usually soaked in brown sugar syrup, and some toppings are sweet on their own. So a 0% drink with pearls still tastes a little sweet.

How to choose

• First time? Start at 50%. You can always go up next visit.
• Fruit teas often taste best at 50–75%, because sweetness brings out the fruit.
• Milk teas are good at 25–50% if you like tasting the tea.
• Brown sugar drinks get their sweetness from the syrup, so the sweetness setting may work differently. Ask us.

Free to change

Sweetness and ice level never cost extra at Sweet Boba House. Adjust until it’s right.

Taro is the drink people point at when they see it. It’s purple, it’s creamy, and it’s one of the most-ordered boba flavors anywhere.

What taro is

Taro is a starchy root vegetable grown across Asia, the Pacific and Africa. It’s common in desserts in Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia, which is how it made its way into milk tea.

What it tastes like

Nutty, mildly sweet and a little like vanilla. Some people compare it to a cookies-and-cream milkshake or sweet potato. It isn’t fruity at all.

Why it’s purple

Some taro is naturally purple-flecked, but the bright lavender color in most drinks comes from the taro powder or paste used to make them. Color and flavor vary from shop to shop, so ask us what goes into ours.

How to order it

Taro milk tea with tapioca pearls at 50% sweetness is the classic. It’s also great as a slush.

Brown sugar boba is the one with the dark stripes running down the inside of the cup. They’re called tiger stripes, and they’re made on purpose.

How the stripes happen

Warm tapioca pearls are cooked in a thick brown sugar syrup. Before the drink is poured, the syrup is swirled around the inside of the cup so it clings to the sides. When the cold milk goes in, the syrup stays put in streaks.

What it tastes like

Caramel-like, rich and creamy. Many versions are made with milk instead of tea, so it tastes more like dessert than a tea drink.

How to drink it

Shake or stir before you sip. Otherwise your first sips are plain milk and your last ones are all syrup.

Seasonal version

Every winter we turn it into the Gingerbread Cinnamon Tiger: gingerbread-cinnamon milk, tiger-style brown sugar, crushed gingerbread snaps and a crème brûlée cap. See our winter drinks.

Boba isn’t just a summer drink. Every winter we bring back a holiday menu built around peppermint, gingerbread and cinnamon.

This season’s menu

Add sea moss to any drink for $0.50.

Which one to pick

• Love peppermint mochas? Rhoudolf’s Cocoa-Candy Cane Frappe.
• Want something cozy? Gingerbread-Spiced Chai MT, and ask for it hot.
• Not into milk? The Mistletoe or Sparkling Christmas Punch.

When it’s here

The winter menu runs for a limited time each year, and the last day is posted on the board. Rewards Club members hear about it first by email.

Can’t decide between taro and brown sugar? Don’t. A boba flight puts four mini drinks on one wooden paddle so you can try them side by side.

How it works

1. Pick any four flavors from the menu.
2. Choose one topping for the whole flight.
3. Taste, rank, and argue about it.

Flights worth trying

• The first-timer: taro, brown sugar, mango, strawberry. A tour of the most popular flavors.
• Milk tea lovers: classic, taro, matcha, brown sugar.
• Fruit forward: mango, strawberry, passion fruit, lychee.
• The season: all four of the current seasonal flavors.

Good for groups

Flights are made for sharing. Bring a friend, split one, and find your new regular order.

Boba flights are a January special at Sweet Boba House. Ask at the counter for this year’s flight.

When it’s below zero outside, an iced drink is a hard sell. Good news: boba works hot, too.

What changes

Warm milk tea tastes rounder and more tea-forward. The pearls stay softer and chewier in a warm drink, since cold is what makes them firm up.

What works best hot

• Classic and brown sugar milk teas
• Taro
• Chai and other spiced milk teas
• Matcha

Fruit teas, slushes and drinks with popping boba or jelly are better cold.

How to order

Just ask for it hot. We’ll skip the ice and use a lidded hot cup. Ask which drinks we can make hot that day.

Boba is easy to make dairy-free. A few swaps cover most of it.

Swap the milk

Ask for a milk alternative in any milk tea. Ask which alternatives we have that day. Fruit teas are usually made without milk at all.

Toppings to check

• Tapioca pearls are typically made from tapioca starch, water and sugar.
• Popping boba is made with juice and a seaweed-based skin.
• Jellies are often konjac, agar or coconut, but some recipes use gelatin.
• Cream caps and puddings usually contain dairy, and some puddings contain egg.

Recipes vary by supplier, so ask us if you’re avoiding something specific.

A few dairy-free orders

• Mango fruit tea with popping boba
• Taro milk tea with oat milk and pearls
• Strawberry slush (ask whether the base has dairy)

Allergies

If you have a food allergy, tell us when you order. We share equipment, so we can’t promise a drink is free of traces.

You can enjoy boba and keep it less sweet. It mostly comes down to three choices.

1. Turn down the sweetness

Order at 25% or 0%. Sweetness is free to adjust, so experiment until you find your level.

2. Choose toppings with care

Tapioca pearls are usually soaked in brown sugar syrup, so they add sweetness on their own. Jellies and popping boba are sweet too. Try one topping instead of two, or none.

3. Start from a lighter base

A plain milk tea or fruit tea at low sweetness lets the tea come through. Seasonal drinks with cream caps, whipped cream or cookie crumbs are treats, built to be sweet.

Sugar-free options

Every drink can be made at 0% sweetness. Ask at the counter about sugar-free options.

It depends on the drink. The pearls themselves don’t have caffeine. The tea does.

Usually has caffeine

• Milk teas made with black, green or oolong tea
• Matcha, which is powdered green tea
• Thai tea
• Fruit teas that use a tea base

Often caffeine-free

• Brown sugar milk made without tea
• Slushes and smoothies that skip the tea
• Taro when it’s made with milk and no tea base

Recipes differ from shop to shop, and some taro or slush drinks do include tea. If you’re avoiding caffeine, ask us which drinks on today’s menu are made without it.

Ordering late?

Pick a slush or a brown sugar milk, or ask us to make your favorite without tea where we can.

Boba is best fresh, but a few tricks get it home in good shape.

Drink it within a couple of hours

Tapioca pearls are softest right after they’re made. As they cool and sit, they firm up. In the fridge overnight, they get hard. Plan to finish your drink the same day, ideally within an hour or two.

Order for the ride

• Light ice for longer trips, so the drink doesn’t water down.
• Fruit teas and slushes travel well.
• Popping boba and jellies hold their texture longer than tapioca.

Curbside pickup

Order ahead, park in a curbside spot and tell us your car. We’ll bring it out, so it goes straight from our counter to your cupholder.

Delivery

Delivery apps are the next step in the shop’s plan. Until then, order ahead for pickup so your drink is ready when you pull up.

Bubble tea is younger than you might think. It started in Taiwan in the 1980s.

Tea culture first

Taiwan has a long history of tea growing and tea houses. By the 1980s, cold, shaken tea drinks were popular there, and tapioca balls were already a familiar dessert.

The first bubble tea

Two Taiwanese tea houses both claim to have invented it in the mid-1980s: Chun Shui Tang in Taichung and Hanlin Tea Room in Tainan. The dispute even went to court, which didn’t settle it. What’s clear is that someone had the idea to drop tapioca into iced milk tea, and it caught on fast.

Going global

Through the 1990s, bubble tea spread across Asia and into US cities with large Taiwanese and Chinese American communities, especially in California. Over the next two decades it moved from there into suburbs, college towns and malls across the country.

And here

Today you’ll find boba far from either coast, including right here on Craig Road.

Same drink, at least four names.

Pearl milk tea

The original Taiwanese name, zhēnzhū nǎichá, means pearl milk tea. The “pearls” are the tapioca balls.

Boba

“Boba” started as Taiwanese slang for the bigger tapioca pearls. It’s a playful word for something large and round. The name traveled with the drink to California, where it stuck.

Bubble tea

The “bubbles” are probably not the pearls. Shaking tea with ice makes a layer of foam on top, and that foam gave shaken tea drinks their name before pearls were part of the recipe.

Which name to use

Any of them. People will know what you mean.

The chewy pearls at the bottom of your drink start as a root vegetable.

It starts with cassava

Cassava (also called yuca or manioc) is a starchy root grown in tropical regions. Its starch is extracted and dried into a fine white powder: tapioca starch.

Making the dough

Tapioca starch is mixed with boiling water to form a dough. Brown sugar or caramel is often added, which gives classic pearls their dark color. Plain pearls are white or clear.

Rolling

The dough is rolled into small balls. Most shops buy pearls already formed and dried, then cook them in-house.

Cooking

Dry pearls are boiled until soft, rested, then soaked in sugar syrup to keep them tender and sweet. Because cooked pearls firm up as they sit, shops make them in batches throughout the day.

Why fresh matters

A fresh pearl is soft outside and bouncy in the middle. An old one is hard. It’s the reason boba is best enjoyed soon after it’s made. See boba to go.

Template. Monthly. One photo per pick, taken in the shop.

• Pick 1: staff name orders drink, sweetness, ice, toppings because one line, in their words
• Pick 2: staff name · order · why
• Pick 3: staff name · order · why
• “Try it if you like…”: one comparison per pick
• Link the drinks to the menu and the how-to-order guide.

Template. Quarterly, the week the new menu launches. Matches the seasonal email.

• One-line intro: what inspired this season’s menu
• Table: drink · what’s in it for every new drink
• “If you liked last season’s drink, try new drink”
• Dates: start to end
• Photo of the full lineup on the counter

Template. Monthly. Mirrors the events on the Facebook page.

• Date · event · location · what we’re bringing: market-only flavor, sign-up booth
• Date · event · location · details
• Fundraiser nights: school or nonprofit · % of sales
• Photo from the last event, with permission from anyone pictured

Template. Interview the owner. Publish once, then link it from the About page.

• Why boba, and why Eau Claire: in Mai’s words
• The first day on Craig Road: story
• Favorite drink on the menu and how she orders it
• What she wants customers to feel when they walk in
• Photo: Mai behind the counter

Template. Update when a partnership starts or ends.

• Snappy Car Wash: buy any drink, use the code on your cup or receipt for $2 off your next wash. Confirm current terms.
• Partner · what the partnership is · how customers use it
• Why we partner locally: owner’s words

Template. Shoot photos and short clips across one real day. Cut the clips for TikTok.

• Opening: first tasks, first batch of pearls
• Midday rush: what people order most
• Afternoon: students after class, the neon wall
• Evening: closing routine
• Quote from the team: favorite part of the job

Template. Publish the week before fall semester. Matches the back-to-school email.

• The student deal: discount with a valid student ID
• Getting here from campus: bus route, drive time, parking
• Study fuel: 3 drinks, with or without caffeine; link the caffeine guide
• Group orders and flights for study groups
• Rewards Club sign-up with a student email