Over the years I have taken many people to experience bubble tea, friends from inside and outside of school and also family. Every time we go we run into the same problem. How do you order? The menu at most of there places are stuffed with every drink they have, there are numbers, percentages, ice and sugar levels, sizes and so much more. It can be a lot for a person to take it. So let’s dissect a typical menu and figure out how to order!
Here is a menu from a popular bubble tea chain, VIVI bubble tea. We are going to go through step by step to see how to order!
The first step is picking out your drink. As you can see on this many there are different categories of drinks. Milk tea is what people typically think of when they picture bubble tea, a tea mixed with creamer or milk and flavoring. Flavored teas are another popular category, these drinks lack milk or cream (they are just tea and flavoring). Slushes are great on a hot day, your choice of fruit is blended with flavoring and ice. Yakult is a yogurt-based drink, they take a tea and mix it with Yakult (which is a small shot of probiotics – that are found in yogurt). Pick your drink and size and then move onto the sugar level.
The second step is how sweet you want your tea to be. Most places have the same scale – 0%, 25%, 50%, 100%. Simply let the barista know what percentage you want. Just keep in mind 100% sugar is very sweet, I would recommend going with 25% or 50%, but it’s all up to you!
The next step is the level of ice, extra, regular, less or no ice. Again this step depends on your preference! I typically order less ice, as you can get extra tea since the ice isn’t taking up space. On a really hot day, Ill get regular and on cold days ill get no ice.
The last step is to pick your topping. There are many toppings and they vary from store to store. Tapioca, lychee jelly, aloe, pudding, red bean, custard the list goes on and on. My personal favorite is the lychee jelly!
Ordering bubble tea seems a lot more complicated than it actually is. Just remember the steps and what the things on the menu mean. First drink, second sugar, third ice, and forth topping.