Waco Asian-American owned business expanding with third store
Cha Community was founded in 2018, and is the only Taiwanese-owned boba tea café in Waco and Temple. If you've ever come across a bubble or 'boba' tea shop and have loved it, you are not alone.
People around the world enjoy this sweet and refreshing drink. With its unique blend of traditional tea flavors, brown sugar sweetness and chewy tapioca pearls – originating in Taiwan in the early 80s – this one drink has found success here in the U.S. with over 3,000 boba tea shops.
'Tapioca boba is made from cassava root, and that's grinded into powder and then made into the starch that then allows these glutinous kind of boba pearls to be able to be created,' Cha Community co-owner Jaja Chen explains. 'And the texture, I would say, is most similar to gummy bears. That's usually the best way to describe [it], but the flavor is more like a brown sugar, caramel-like flavor. So it's added into the boba milk tea or the drink of choice.'
Cha Community launched as a single pop-up business at the Waco Farmer's Market in 2018. It's first brick-and-mortar store debuted in downtown Waco in 2020. They expanded to a second store in Temple in 2022, and their third store is holding their grand opening on Saturday – across from Baylor University at 1205 South 8th Street. The ribbon cutting begins at 11 a.m.
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