Start Bubble Tea Shop – Hiring Bubble Tea Employees

A bubble tea shop needs to hire a number of employees based on the size of the business operation and the length of time they operate each day. Typically, a bubble tea shop needs only two or three employees during normal business hours and one or two more during peak hours of operations. A bubble tea shop that makes less than 500 cups of drinks per day can be manned by one or two employees who are properly trained to perform the different aspects of work in the business.No matter how small or big is the bubble tea shop operation, great efforts must be exerted in hiring the right persons who will be running the business. You should plan for how many employees you need based on volume of bubble tea drinks sold.

Qualifications for Bubble Tea Employees

Bubble tea shop employees must be people persons as they will be dealing with all types of customers all day long. They must be able to deal with daily challenges and must stay calm every time, regardless of the situation they are facing. We have to remember that all customers are not made the same; some of them could be cranky and rude. Bubble tea shop employees must be able to work with minimal or no supervision at all, especially when one has to be working alone in the shop. They must be comfortable working different shifts and working on weekends and holidays.
A bubble tea employee must have most of the following qualifications:

• Must have experience taking orders and preparing drinks
• Must be able to take inventory and place supplies orders
• Must be able to operate a cash register
• Must be able to accurately handle monetary transactions
• Must be capable of going to the bank to make deposits
• Must be able to prepare supplies for the bubble drinks
• Must be able to speak, in addition to English, the language common to the area of business operation.
Recruitment Procedure
Hiring employees for the bubble tea shop must follow the following stages:
• Recruiting applicants that meet the shop’s requirements;
• Selecting the most qualified among the applicants; and
• Placing the selected applicants for a suitable position in the bubble tea business.

Bubble Tea Employment Application

Applicants for positions in a bubble tea shop must be required to fill up an application form which will be the initial tool of the business owner to weed out ineligible applicants.

Bubble Tea Employee Interview

An applicant may have the best qualifications and experiences on paper but a lot could be learned about him in a personal interview. More information about the applicant could be obtained in the interview process.

Bubble Tea Employee Skills Evaluation

The applicant must be able to demonstrate the skills that he possesses that will be relevant to the position he is applying for. He must be able to show he will handle himself when he is actually immersed in the work environment.

Bubble Tea Employment Requirements

Before hiring, the successful applicants need to pass through a pre-employment screening to determine their eligibility for employment. Among the requirements to be met are the following:
• Employee’s eligibility to work – This federal requirement, as mandated by the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) OF 1986, prospective employees must fill up the I-9 Form to verify his eligibility to legally work in the United States.
• Physical examination – Most employers require prospective employees to pass a physical examination to determine if they are capable of performing the job they applied for. For a bubble tea business, employees not have any illness that can be passed on to other people when they handle drinks and other food products.
• Drug screening – It lessens, if not entirely eliminate, the effects of drug abuse which has been common in many workplaces.
• Live scan – It is digitized fingerprinting system that results to an automated background check. This technology is a replacement of the traditional fingerprinting process.

Managing Boba Bubble Tea Employees

You will need to do some planning on how many bubble tea employees you will need based on sales volume. A bubble tea shop needs only a small number of employees, typically one or two during normal business hours and a little bit more during peak hours of operations. Bubble tea employees must be properly trained to perform the different aspects of work in the business, from preparing the ingredients to manning the cash register. A bubble tea shop owner needs to effectively manage the small staff in order to guarantee the success of the business operations.

A successful bubble tea shop owner/manager must possess a wide range of expertise that ranges from planning and supervising to communicating and motivating his small staff. He must focus on how the bubble tea business can hire, train, inspire, and coach the staff to perform their best. To do this, the owner/manager must be able to set simple objectives and targets, and provide practical and systematic assessments of the employees.

Orderly Approach to Managing Bubble Tea Shops

Most businesses, big or small, possess a system of running their business. The owner or manger of a bubble tea business must make his staff realize the importance of orderly approach to the goals and plans of the business. Since the different functions in the business need to be performed by a handful of employees, each employee must be trained to handle every aspect of work to be performed. They also have to develop a keen understanding of how to divide the work among themselves and when to provide support to each other. The talents and temperament of every single employee will have an enormous role on the success of the business.

Social Approach when Managing Bubble Tea Business

Bubble tea shop employees deal with all types of customers all day long. They must deal with the daily challenges of the business and need to stay calm every time, regardless of the situation they are facing. The business owner or manager must constantly remind the employees that customers are not made the same; many of them are rude and cranky.

It is important that employees be provided with training on the social aspect of doing business. An employee can be very good in accomplishing his tasks in the bubble tea shop but may be wanting in terms of customer relations, making him more of a liability than asset. A healthy dose of customer-oriented personality must be instilled into every employee of the business.

Two-way Street for Managing Bubble Tea Employees

Management is always a two-way street. The owner or manager of a bubble tea business must listen to the needs and sentiments of his employees. He must get the feedback of his employees on matters both business and personal as both will spell the difference between success and failure. An effective communication and problem solving system must be present in order for management and employees to improve their delivery of service to the customers. The owner or manager must accept the fact that he does not have a monopoly of good ideas in running the business. The employees are in the front line and they can contribute a thing or two in improving the performance of business.

Popping Bobas – What Is It?

Popping bobas are the latest craze. But what are they?

Popping bobas are similar to tapioca pearls, also referred to as bubbles or boba, but with fruit juice that pops inside your mouth. Popping pearls are considered to be revolutionary technology in the production of pearls toppings. The innovative product is becoming the top attraction in shops that sell frozen yogurt, bubble tea, shaved ice, ice cream, and other cold drinks.

Trending Beverage Sensation

Popping bobas which originated in Asia, the place that gave birth to the famous tapioca pearls, is now trending in beverage shops in the United States and Europe. Popping bobas, or popping pearls, are creative and healthy toppings featured by famous chains such as Pinkberry, Yogurtland, and Red Mango. They also find their way into a variety of desserts and beverages, giving them a fresh, new look. A lot of people also buy popping pearls for use in their own homes.
Popping bobas have become very popular because of the fruit taste in the bobas and the exciting feeling created when they pop inside the mouth. The popping bobas literally burst with fruit sensation coming from the different flavors available.

Popping Bobas

Popping bobas are similar to the tapioca bobas in the bubble or boba tea. Popping bobas, which are slippery, little fruit flavored balls, have thin skin and are filled with fruit juice that pops in your mouth when they are bitten or squeezed. They are made from seaweed extract with fruit juice flavorings such as mango, lychee, strawberry, passion fruit, orange, green apple, cantaloupe, kiwi, pomegranate, cherry, and other seasonal fruits.
The main ingredients of the popping bobas include water, fruit juice, sugar, calcium lactate, malic acid, artificial coloring, fruit flavorings, and seaweed extracts which form the outer wall or skin.
Popping bobas are prepared using the trendy way of cooking called Molecular Gastronomy, an area of food science that investigates the chemical and physical transformation of ingredients in cooking. The flavored juices that contain no calcium are mixed with a small amount of sodium alginate which will then be dropped into a container filled with cold calcium chloride solution. Each drop of the alginated liquid forms into a small ball in the calcium solution, causing the formation of a thin, flexible skin. The resulting popping bobas are removed from the calcium bath and rinsed with water to remove any after taste.

Tapioca Pearls vs. Popping Bobas

Tapioca pearls and popping pearls are both popular toppings and addition to beverages and desserts but they differ a lot from each other. Tapioca pearls are chewy while popping pearls quickly pops in the mouth. The tapioca pearls provide a sweet aftertaste as you chew them while the quickly bursting popping pearls instantly add a layer of flavor to the beverage or dessert.

The tapioca pearls, sweetened with honey or sugar, provides roundness to beverages made of tea. Because of their neutral flavors, tapioca pearls can pair with any flavor of drink or dessert. Popping pearls, on the other hand, with their large array of flavors, must be paired with the same or complementary flavor. The availability of different flavors allow for many choices. The only drawback here is that you need to stock on so many containers of different flavored popping bobas.

Various Types of Tea Used to Make Bubble Tea Drinks

Brewed tea is a key element to creating the perfect Bubble Tea drink. Green tea, black tea, among others, are mixed with Bubble Tea syrups or powders to create Bubble Tea drinks. Then tapioca pearls, jelly, popping boba, etc. can be added in to finish the drink. There are various types of tea used to make bubble tea drinks.

Tea is a world famous beverage prepared by steeping cured tea leaves in hot water. Next to water, tea is the preferred drink in the world. The tea leaves came from an Asian evergreen shrub – Camellia sinensis. Tea is an aromatic drink with slightly bitter, astringent flavor. Some tea varieties exude floral, grassy, sweet, or nutty notes.

Tea drinking started in China for medicinal purposes. Portuguese priests and merchants are believed to have brought tea to the West during the 16th century. Tea drinking became widely accepted by the British during the 17th century. The British, in order to cut the Chinese monopoly on tea trading, introduced the plant to India which was their colony at the time. India is now one of the world’s largest producers of tea.

Popular Tea Varieties for Bubble Tea

There are different tea varieties that are popular among the tea drinkers world-wide, as follows:

• Black Tea – It is made from leaves of Asian evergreen shrub Camellia sinensis. Black tea has a stronger flavor than other tea varieties because the leaves go through longer oxidizing process. Black tea retains its flavor for many years, making it ideal for storage and transport.
Black tea has active substances that develop only at temperatures over 90 °C (194 °F) which means that the best flavor can be obtained by steeping it in water that is near its boiling point. In Western countries, black tea is usually brewed for four minutes and steeped for more than 30 second, a total of less than five minutes. In other countries, boiling water is used in stewing tea for a stronger result. Tea drinkers in India boil black tea leaves for fifteen minutes to make Masala chai, a very strong brew of black tea. Black tea accounts for around ninety percent of tea sold worldwide.
• Green Tea – Just like black tea, green tea is also made from the leaves of Camellia sinensis but is subjected to different process of preparation. The leaves of the Camellia sinensis plants are harvested and quickly heated by steaming or fan firing, then dried to stop the oxidation process. Oxidation would turn the green leaves into brown and remove the fresh-picked flavor of green tea. Green tea has a flavor profile that ranges from grass-like when it is toasted to vegetal, sweet, and seaweed-like when it is steamed. Green tea is light in color and is mildly astringent.
• Oolong Tea – It is a Chinese tea made from the leaves of the shrub Camellia sinensis. The tea is produced following a unique process that includes withering the plant under the sun and oxidizing before the leaves are twisted and curled. The leaves are allowed to oxidize to up to 85%. Oolong tea is popular among Chinese tea drinkers because of the sweet, fruity, and honey-infused aromas. Some oolong varieties have woody, roasted aroma. Oolong tea leaves have distinct styles: some are long and curly while others are wrap-curled into beads with tail.
• Flowering Tea – It is made by having a dried tea leaves bundled around dried flowers, making a bulb which is set to dry. When steeped into hot water, the bundle expands and unfurls into a blooming flower. Flowering tea typically comes from the Yunnan Province, China. The flowers used with the tea leaves include chrysanthemum, lily, hibiscus, jasmine, globe amaranth, and osmanthus.
There are many more varieties of tea as tea drinkers make their own concoction of this famous beverage.

Boba Bubble Tea History

Bubble tea, a drink that has been widely appreciated by people in the Asian suburbs, is also fun to eat. It is taking people away from their trendy coffee drinks and is becoming the new craze in west coast cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. It is also becoming popular in New York City, in the Hawaiian Islands, and even in Vancouver and Toronto in Canada.

A Different Kind of Tea

Bubble tea is loosely associated with a popular drink that has been given different names such as pearl shake, tapioca pearl drink, tapioca ball drink, pearl tea, black pearl tea, boba ice tea, bubble drink, boba nai, momi, momi milk, nai cha,, zhen zhu nai chai, and others.

Bubble tea is different from the day-to-day tea that people are familiar with. Its composition cannot be easily understood by people who had been drinking tea the traditional way. It is typically made of tea, sugar, milk, and the black tapioca balls or pearls. It is sweet but the sugar content is less than what is found in the typical carbonated soda drinks. The “bubble” refers to the formation of foam when the drink is shaken, the best way of mixing it instead of stirring.

Bubble tea can be prepared in different variations, depending on the store that sells it, such as bubble milk green tea with tapioca, bubble milk tea with tapioca. As one goes around different stores and countries where Bubble Tea is offered, he will find hundreds of variants or names for the same drink.

Origin of Boba Bubble Tea

The origin of bubble tea is traced to Taiwan, a country that practices the traditional tea ceremonies. Taiwanese consume different varieties of tea such as the Iron Goddess and Alpine Oolong, black teas, and green teas. The Taiwanese tea culture dates back to the ancient Chinese civilization. Tea drinking is part of the everyday Taiwanese life, giving rise to various tea houses or tea-arts shop all over the territory.

The common belief is that bubble tea has its origin in 1988 at Shui Tang, a local tea house. Lin Hsiu Hui, the tea house’s product manager, had sweetened tapioca for dessert during a staff meeting when she impulsively poured the tapioca in the glass of ice tea she was drinking. The resulting drink from the mixture caught the attention of everybody in the meeting who decided to try it among themselves. Everybody liked the mixture and what started as a playful action turned out to be a concoction that the tea house started to offer its patrons. The new tea flavor became a top seller for the tea house.
The drink became popular in the area and later throughout Taiwan and the different parts of Southeast Asia. The popularity of the drink spread to other countries with Asian population, including the western countries. In 2012, McDonald’s McCafe in Austria and Germany offered bubble tea to their customers.

Wide Acceptance of Bubble Tea from all over the word

From its playful beginnings in a Taiwanese tea house, bubble tea, with its different variations is now widely accepted in many cities all over the world. What started as a drink enjoyed by people of Asian descent, bubble tea is now appreciated by people coming from different racial groups.