Latea's Made-From-Scratch Boba Pearls Are a Family Recipe

If the boba’s black, turn your back.

That’s what we learned after speaking with Jack Hsiao and Wei-Chih “Wei” Kao, co-owners of the Lone Tree location of Latea, one of the many boba tea shops that have popped up in Denver in recent years.

At their shop, Hsiao and Kao pride themselves on doing things the old-fashioned way — using natural ingredients, brewing tea on site, and making syrups and boba from scratch using the recipe for boba pearls passed down by Hsiao’s grandmother.

A grandmother’s influence

Growing up in Taiwan, both of Hsiao’s parents were busy entrepreneurs, so he was essentially raised by his grandmother. She sold boba desserts as a street vendor before starting her own catering company. Boba, or tapioca pearls, were eaten in Taiwan long before boba tea. “For hundreds of years, it was a cultural dessert that people used tapioca to shape in pearls, cook in syrup and serve it over ice or even just cold water,” explains Hsiao. It was relatively recently, in 1986, that two businesses (Chun Shui Tang from central Taichung and Hanlin Tea Room in southern Tainan) both claimed to have invented boba tea.

Hsiao credits his journey as a food entrepreneur in large part to watching his grandmother cook in the kitchen. "Watching her do everything, she knew how to do dessert, to butcher meat, handle seafood — her cooking and her management style on how to prep for a hundred or even a thousand people,” he says. From a young age, Hsiao knew he wanted to eventually own a food business.

In his sophomore year of high school, he participated in an exchange student program that landed him in Idaho. He eventually ended up at Purdue University in its hospitality management program. During his entire college tenure, he sold boba tea at club fundraising events and night markets. He spent those formative years creating and developing flavors like tiramisu and creme brulee milk teas, both of which are staples at Latea now.

By his last year of college, Hsiao began to develop the business plan for Latea. Before he graduated, “I already knew what I would be looking at expense-wise like construction costs, kitchen equipment…the lease deposit. I would call around and find out all those costs,” he remembers. His total estimated cost: $120,000 (it ended up being double that), which he funded from investments from family, friends and mentors. He graduated December 2012 and the first Latea location in West Lafayette, Indiana opened in August 2013.

Even before the grand opening, Hsiao had already secured funding for a second location in Champaign, Illinois. A third followed within a few years in Culver City, California. That’s the shop where Kao tasted his first Latea drink and decided to partner with Hsiao to open a location in the Denver area.

Expansion to Denver

Hsiao’s cousin is Kao’s best friend, so he’d always gotten secondhand updates on Latea's growth. When Kao decided to leave his corporate career to become an entrepreneur, his friend convinced him to sit down with Hsiao to see if the boba tea life was a fit. He was convinced before he had finished the first drink. “I thought I had boba tea before, but I felt like I could just keep drinking and drinking Latea’s boba tea. It was so good” he remembers. A graduate of Regis University, he felt Latea would be a perfect fit in the Denver market.

The two decided to partner and leased a former boba shop in Park Meadows Mall. Kao quickly got a crash-course in the Latea way of doing boba. "Before, he never really understood what goes in the drink,” says Hsiao, who insists that all the locations of Latea stick as close as reasonably possible to his grandmother’s traditional from-scratch, made-with-love mentality. “My grandmother always said, ‘If you are not comfortable to serve it to your family, do not serve it out,’” Hsiao notes. Following that creed, he directly imports his teas from Taiwan; imports unprocessed organic brown sugar from Mexico and Columbia; and follows his grandmother’s boba recipe for the exact ratio of brown sugar to water to tapioca powder as well as cooking and marinating time.

 

Different than the others

“You know Lollicup? They are the largest U.S. boba tea supplier. They were one of the very first boba brands that moved here in the '90’s,” says Hsiao. “Now they’re a Fortune 500. ...They have a training center, all the powder, the [syrups], the cups, lids, whatever you need — a one stop for building a boba tea shop."

But Hsiao couldn’t stoop to using manufactured boba pearls with additives he couldn’t pronounce and, often, artificial coloring to make them appear black — not after he spent his childhood watching his grandmother cutting boba dough and hand-rolling it into balls.

“We want to make it like how it was used to, to honor my grandmother,” Hsiao says, even if that means spending eight hours a week just making and processing boba. Each of his shops cook the boba daily for 45 minutes before marinating the balls in a roasted brown sugar or honey mixture. It’s expensive — Hsiao estimates his food costs are double his competitors. “You could buy manufactured boba pearls cheaper than tapioca powder. ...Real homemade boba should look like this: clear,” Kao says, pointing to a sample.
 

What to order at Latea

The quality of the boba is apparent in the taste — each tapioca pearl is perfectly chewy with a gummy bear texture that is extremely pleasant to munch on. For first-timers (to Latea or boba tea in general), the roasted brown sugar milk drink is an ideal place to start. There are the typical options to customize with sweetness level, amount of ice, quantity of boba, and alternative ice. From there, venture into popular signature drinks such as tiramisu milk (which tastes like the Italian dessert in liquid form), ube creme brulee or a a summertime favorite, the Mango Cloud, which is made with real mango puree, fresh mango and creamy cheese foam on top.

The classic strawberry matcha latte offers a nice balance of bitter organic Uji matcha mixed with a homemade strawberry jam. Or keep it simple with a fresh brewed tea. “I’ve tried every single drink on the menu — well, except for the Matcha Latte Creamy Cheese Float, and that’s what I’ll get today,” declares regular Julie Messina, who drives from Castle Rock to get her boba tea fix at Latea. “I love how they do everything fresh here — they brew the tea. ...You can stand here and look in the back, ‘What are they doing?’ They’re rolling out the boba. I mean who else does that?”

“We’re focused on doing things right at the beginning. We’re trying to build a brand together. ...Eventually this can be big, bigger,” says Wei. The next Starbucks of boba big? “That’s a long time away,” he says, laughing — but he didn’t say no.

Latea is located at 8433 Park Meadows Center Drive in Lone Tree and is open 11:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday through Sunday. For more information, visit latealounge.com/denver.