Been living in Taiwan for many years now — and about a year ago I started noticing Bubble Tea Shops are frequently running out of Boba “Bubbles”. It happens so often now — what is going on? Anyone else experience this ridiculousness?
What’s wrong? It takes time to defrost, boil and cool.
It’s just surprising that Taiwan, the inventor of Bubble Tea, suddenly can’t keep enough stock of Bubbles for Bubble Tea at all the shops.
What time you going? We notice that only at night when the outlet likely sold out of this favorite drink’s main ingredient.
They take a REALLY long time to cook, as in REALLY long. The bubbles come in this powdery ball that must be cooked for a minimum of like 3 hours (or perhaps longer), so the shops figure how much they’re going to sell in a day and cook a huge batch. They also do not keep that well, as in they get soggy kinda quickly too.
I do not know if there’s a way to speed up their cooking, perhaps with a pressure cooker?
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Yeah, my wife worked in a boba tea shop part-time for fun once.
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A very long time ago, I bought some boba balls to cook myself in the states, and that’s how I found out that it takes a VERY long time to cook them.
The bubble teas you get in the states are all soggy as hell because they were probably days old. In Taiwan they cook what they need for the day and throw out the rest if they don’t sell. If you sell soggy bubble tea you will not last long in Taiwan.
Yep, the missus has a few times made boba tea at home for the kids. It’s not like pouring hot water in 3-和-1 coffee powder, lol
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Anyone tried bubble coke or sprite?
Do boba tea outlets offer it?
Maybe it goes on to-try listm
I’ve never attempted to make boba, but a former student prepared some for me once and it didn’t take anywhere near that long.
So I’m not buying this at all unless someone who’s a more reliable source of information confirms it. There are multiple pages on the internet suggesting it takes somewhere between 10 min and 40 min to cook them. I’ve no idea what you did wrong/differently, but I remember you think it takes “hours and hours of boiling” to make mashed potato too, so I think this is probably user error… 
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Tried the usual shops at 7pm or 8pm - now they usually put up a small sign saying they are sold out. So I figured I’d go earlier. And still, at 3pm they were sold out - and that’s with multiple tea shops right next to each other, all sold out. Must be some crazy busy lunch rush to wipe out all the bubbles across the city.
But most importantly, why don’t the local businesses try to meet demand? - it’s a no brainer, they could take in more money. And why is this happening now all of a sudden? - in the decade I’ve spent in Taiwan, I have never encountered this issue before, and now it’s all the time. So strange.
There’s a labour shortage in Taiwan .
Could also be raw material cost?
A few times recently I got refused chance to order stuff in restaurants ‘laoban too busy’.
Laoban shouted at me ‘bu xing bu xing, wo jiu shi yige ren’.
Went into a MosBurger in Taipei two weeks ago…same thing. Lady started shouting at me in English before I opened my mouth…30 mins…30 mins…
This was my ‘Boba’ moment cos since when do laobans or staff in a restaurant turn down orders lol.
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I work in the auto manufacturing business. You’d be surprised… People will often reject orders if they are too complicated.
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Yeah I totally agree for manufacturing you are right.
This is just your mom and pop restaurants I’m talking about. Actually no even mosburger is a joke (but they have always been bad just having 2 or 3 staff usually).
A famous Taipei beef noodle place was in the news recently as it changed to take away only… staff shortages.
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I feel like in Taiwan, manufacturers only want to deal with you if you’re a large corporation, or someone who will bring in tens of millions. Otherwise they refuse everything.
There’s lots of middle sized companies that deal with eachother in manufacturing, but it comes with its own set of headaches. A lot of them are very 隨便
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Happened again.
“Mei you Jen ju”
Becoming impossible to get a real bubble tea. Been trying for a year now, wild