The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to a number of shortages over the past year. Such goods as toilet paper, hand sanitizer and even coins became harder to find. Now, aftershocks of the coronavirus outbreak appear to be contributing another scarcity – one which could affect some consumers’ favorite drinks.
Those little imported tapioca balls — commonly referred to as “boba pearls,” the top-billed ingredient in “boba milk tea” or “bubble tea” drinks — are in short supply for some business owners. It’s all due to a bottleneck in the Asian-U.S. shipping chain.
Boba drinks are a kind a half-beverage/half dessert concoction that starts with iced green or black tea. They’re usually sweetened and stirred or blended with milk or cream. The pièce de résistance is usually a heaping scoop of the chewy little tapioca globes — made from starch that’s culled from the cassava root — that get inhaled gleefully via colorful oversized straws.
These enhanced milk teas originated in Taiwan in the early 1980s but have since garnered a global following. Southern California is no exception. Drinks that arrived here on the menus of eateries serving Southeast Asian food or at tiny specialty shops in the San Gabriel Valley and Orange County have percolated out to land in storefronts in just about every major retail dining center, ranging from little mom-and-pop operations to stores operated by burgeoning tea-drink chains.
And, at the moment, that adds up to a lot of bubble-tea-slurpers concerned about how long the supply of their beloved gummies will hold out.
The national drink-shop chain Boba Guys helped trigger the current boba-shortage buzz nationwide when it posted on social media about its supply concerns earlier this month.
Local folks have started to share those concerns.
“Supplies from Asia importing into the USA are very slow because of COVID policies put into place creating a shortage on supplies,” said Greg Tieu, founder of wholesale sellers Bubble Tea Canada and Bubble Tea USA, in an email statement. “There are not enough empty containers returning to Asia to continue the cycles.”
While abiding by “safer at home” orders, Americans bought more goods online during the past year, causing the ports in Los Angeles and other coastal cities to back up with more shipping containers than they can handle.
The logistics of dealing with empty containers in the midst of an unprecedented cargo surge has been an ongoing challenge for both the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Port of L.A. Executive Director Gene Seroka said this month that the number of empties sent back to Asia in March hit an all-time record. But the other part of that equation — getting empties out quickly enough to exporters spread throughout the country — is also part of the port-side challenge as U.S. exports continue to languish.
“We’ve got to thread the needle, we’ve got a delicate balancing act to catch up in what is a massive, once-in-a-lifetime (cargo) surge,” Seroka said in public remarks this month.
Tieu also said that European routes will cost almost double in importation fees and his company will scale back shipping by one-third until this frenzy ends. However, he estimates that they will continue to operate for another two months before there really becomes a reason for concern.
At this point, consumers are not yet seeing much of a daily impact here. But that could change in the weeks ahead.
Andrew Do, the manager at Boba My Tea in Northridge, said the store prepared itself by ordering 20 boxes a week just in case something like this happened.
“We don’t consume that much, even though we are a busy shop,” Do said. “It’s just that we stack them. Every boba has a shelf life, so we stack them according to dates.”
Do did mention, however, that his 20-box shipment for this week never arrived.
He said he thought his order might have been displaced at first, but after being passed from one customer service representative to another, Do was finally told that a new shipment wouldn’t come in until this weekend. And that boba shipment, he was told, is by no means guaranteed.
Other retailers are facing similar issues. Lei Wang, manager of Volcano House Tea on Sawtelle Boulevard, says she has enough boba for a few more weeks — but her suppliers are telling her they may be out for a couple of months.
“We are kind of concerned about it, but there’s nothing we can do about it because it is not only my store,” Wang said. “It is other stores as well.”
Small tea houses, like the Volcano Tea House, are at a disadvantage during such a shortage. Just as people panic-purchased toilet paper during the early days of the pandemic last year, businesses afraid of running out of boba are buying up as much as they can find.
Some customers are already concerned with where they can get their boba fix.
Marcie Taylor, a social media marketing consultant with Locca Bubble Tea in Mission Viejo – a company that sells do-it-yourself bubble tea kits – and self-described “boba-holic” audibly gasped when asked what she would do if she wasn’t able add the little tapioca balls to her teas.
“Don’t even say that,” Taylor said. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
Taylor said she could manage, trying different add-ons like crystal pearls or grass jelly, but if she didn’t find one she liked as much as boba she might resort to making her own.
“Lessons learned from the pandemic: make it if you have to,” Taylor said.
Taylor isn’t the only person with this idea.
The Eater LA website reported a customer who considered stocking up on tapioca and making their own balls. It’s possible, but it’s an arduous process for a home cook. And supplies of uncooked boba at supermarkets may also start to run short if supplies slow down further.
Not all customers are panicked about the shortfall. Hamid Khan, a customer in line at the Volcano Tea House, said he knew nothing about the shortage, but if he couldn’t get boba he’d probably just change his drink order.
“It’s not like everyone is getting the boba,” Wang said. “It’s like half and half.”
Wang explained that boba is just an add-on, anyway, and the shortage won’t affect the teas Volcano makes. The shop also sells grassy jelly, aloe and other toppings in addition to traditional boba, all popular options during the boba-boom.
So even if folks end up waiting for their boba some day — from sweet egg pudding to lychee jelly to adzuki beans — they’ll still have options until that next shipment arrives.
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April 25, 2021 at 11:39PM
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Another pandemic shortage? Toilet paper, hand sanitizer and now – boba tea? - East Bay Times
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