This Taiwanese boba tea shop wants to be “the Starbucks of tea,” but don’t expect coffee, owner Alex Su joked. It will never sell coffee.
TPumps is opening in Old Town Monrovia this fall, its seventh location. It first opened in 2011 in San Mateo in the Bay Area and made its first Southern California appearance in 2016 in Pasadena. The growing chain, which has another Southland location in Upland, often sees lines out the door and down the block.
Once, a group of patrons took an Uber from San Diego to Pasadena, Su said, just to get their hands on a cup of the fresh tea.
TPumps, set to open at 510 S. Myrtle Ave., acclaims itself for brewing loose tea leaves instead of tea bags or powdered tea. Su compared his business model to Starbucks because the shop allows customers to personalize their drinks with as many flavors and modifications as they want and promises to remake customers’ drinks if they don’t like them.
Monrovia was the perfect spot to open up a new store because the small, friendly town reminds Su of TPumps’ original Bay Area store, he said. The company revamped its logo to include a throwback to its origins: The ‘U” in TPumps is a boba cup with the Golden Gate Bridge as a straw.
Downtown Monrovia has just the right amount of traffic, Su said. Monrovia “has a very good small town atmosphere. People are extremely friendly. Its a great location to be in rather than a shopping plaza or mall.”
Monrovia has at least six existing boba sellers, Craig Jimenez, community development director for Monrovia, said. Only two classify as boba tea shops, per Google. The others are Asian restaurants that include boba drinks among their offerings.
TPumps is moving into what used to be the Family Affair Music Shop, which closed about 1 1/2 years ago, Jimenez said.
Su said that his company signed the lease in August last year and anticipates opening sometime in October. He originally planned to open in June or July to serve the summer’s influx of iced tea drinkers, but he is waiting for SoCal Edison to upgrade the building’s power infrastructure to support the drink-making machinery.
“Once we have enough power, we can have final inspections from the city and (county) health department,” Su said. “We are probably 90% complete. It’s like four months behind our schedule, but October is a more feasible time frame.”
“We are not in a hurry,” he added. The goal is “to make one thing right, which is good tea.” TPumps doesn’t sell treats or coffee like many other boba shops; it’s strictly tea, Su said.
“We definitely feel we are at a different level than a lot of tea stores. Their concept (is to) do a variety of products. We just do one: tea,” Su said. “We have not changed anything from our menu since 2011.”
