With tariffs on the horizon, is your boba habit at risk?

Business Insider

24-04-2025

Jeren Calinisan and Dominique Nguyen are worried about the price of one of their favorite indulgences: boba tea, a popular Taiwanese sweet beverage, chock-full of chewy tapioca balls.
"$8 already is the most I've ever paid for a boba drink," Nguyen said as she sipped her champion milk tea with jasmine silk boba.
It was mid-April, and the two friends had made a pit stop at Odd One Out, a tea shop in Pasadena, California, two weeks after President Donald Trump announced 32% tariffs on Taiwan, which he later paused for 90 days. Tariffs on China, a major source of other boba supplies, are also still in flux. The tea shops, producers, and boba lovers Business Insider spoke to are already preparing for price hikes.
"As someone who drinks boba a lot, it's already kind of expensive living here in Los Angeles to get boba. So this is a new concern," said Calinisan, 29, who drinks boba around twice a month. Calinisan is Filipino American, and Nguyen is Vietnamese American — for both of them, drinking boba was a popular pastime growing up in the Bay Area.
The Taiwanese treat has grown in popularity in the US, as brands like Starbucks and Jack in the Box have attempted to cash in on the boba craze. The US imported 38 million pounds of tapioca for consumption from Taiwan in 2024, up 927% from 2004, per the United States International Trade Commission.
Odd One Out specializes in its own unique creation of silk boba, a mixture of tapioca and jelly. As a smaller franchise with two stores in Taiwan and three in the US, it's trying to delay the impact of future tariffs for as long as possible.
"We're probably going to try to stockpile as much as we can," said cofounder Patrick Sun. Many of its botanical ingredients are imported from Taiwan, and Sun said it's difficult to find equivalents in the US. "We're not willing to really yield on quality. So for us, it's just going to impact our bottom line."
Selling boba requires importing nearly everything
The gummy consistency of boba comes from the tapioca starch made of cassava plants, a starchy root vegetable predominantly grown in hot tropical climates of Southeast Asia, said David Fan, one of the cofounders of US Boba Company, which produces boba for over 2,000 stores nationwide. Cassava is not as widely grown in the US, and the US Boba Company is one of the few domestic boba manufacturers.
A lot of components that go into selling boba, like machinery, tea leaves, and drinkware, could be hit by tariffs. Even the cups are atypical of US-made cups, due to their rims and sizes, and boba requires wide straws to fit the little balls.
Fan said the company imports tools and tea from China and other parts of Asia. "It's going to increase our cost as much as 20% to 30% overall, across the board."
Right now, a pound of boba sold by the US Boba Company makes 10 servings and costs $11.99. Fan said that customer prices under tariffs could increase by as much as a dollar more per drink.
Meanwhile, Sun said he expects the tariffs to increase the company's cost of goods by between 8% and 15%. He added that he doesn't plan to raise prices, and that profits could take a 5% hit.
CoCo Bubble Tea, a major boba tea franchise with several thousand stores around the world, stocked up on three months of inventory at its stores, said Kody Wong, its director of business development. He added that he doesn't anticipate the company increasing prices in the next three to four months if tariffs are implemented.
Wong is also anticipating that the company's menus might look different down the line. "We will find more local resources, like a different-flavor juice," he added.
But Fan said the plan to keep prices the same for customers isn't realistic in the long term if tariffs do come into effect.
"No one is going to be able to just eat the cost for a long time," Fan said. "Business people in the long haul are going to have to make a profit."
Just a few blocks down the road from Odd One Out, Julianna Martinez and her coworker were sharing boba drinks at a local arcade café.
Martinez said she's already feeling the brunt of inflation in her boba spending habits and is nervous about the tariffs.
"I remember when boba used to be $0.50 extra," said Martinez, 23. Now she's been forgoing the tapioca toppings in her drinks to save money. "I sacrifice my preferences for the price."
But Calinisan isn't ready to completely give up one of her favorite drinks. If prices go up, she'll have to buy boba less frequently.
"There's also the fact that I can't make boba myself," Calinisan said. "That's another reason why I'm willing to spend so much."
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