Today we’d like to introduce you to Mao Vang.
Mao, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
First, thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to highlight our story and for choosing us. Every person who has reached out, been there, walked through the doors of our boba shops, who come back again and again, this is possible because of you. Your support and love have fueled our boba dreams and we are so grateful.
It all started when we decided to move out of state to pursue our education in Idaho. My husband and I were both students at BYU Idaho and moved to Rexburg from California in 2014. We were both in school. My husband worked a part time job, and I was mostly home with my children. We have lived there for seven years and have found that there weren’t a lot of fun options to choose from when it comes to drinks and dessert shops. Back then, we couldn’t say things like, “Hey, let’s go get boba” with our friends. There was a lack of bubble tea shops in the area, and we missed it so much as it was a huge part of our childhood.
Boba Luv started as a small food truck in Rexburg, Idaho in 2019. The idea came about when I was pregnant and was craving for it. I couldn’t find anything like it anywhere. I told my husband, “It would be so cool and fun to have a bubble tea shop here. People would hang out and go there all the time!” We lived there for so many years and just kept waiting for someone to open one. Waiting was not going to work. I graduated from school and my husband was also close to finishing. We were both ready for a new adventure but were scared. I remember asking my sister for advice and what she thought about the whole idea of opening a boba shop. She responded, “Why not?! Go for it! If it’s been in the back of your mind all this time. Do it! If anything, you don’t want to regret it later.” I took it hard and deep. I gathered my courage and convinced my husband to open a boba shop with me and that led us to open Boba Luv. Unbeknownst to us, our new endeavor would lead us to the opening of our very own bubble tea shop. We were the first to ever introduce boba to the area and educated everyone what “boba” is since it was so foreign. We wanted to bring and introduce a little bit of the Asian culture into Rexburg. We feel like we didn’t have any of that here and I guess this was kind of our outlet; to introduce who we are, where we came from, and what we do.
We are Hmong people, a minority ethnic group, who originated from China. We are ethnically different and linguistically different from Chinese. Hmong people live all over Thailand, Laos, China, Myanmar, Vietnam, many other places now, and in the United States.
Uncertainty really is scary. At the time, we had no idea! We come from a background of poverty. Our grandparents and parents didn’t have the best jobs growing up due to a lack of skills and education. They came to America so we can have a better and more sustainable life. They taught us to fight for ourselves, our dreams, and have instilled in us to work hard because nothing is earned if you don’t work for it. I think that is where my motivation and determination settled in. We had to learn everything from the bottom up, no mentor, and absolutely zero business experience at the time. What naïve children we were! I just knew deep within me that I was doing the right thing. We were doing it for those who couldn’t. We were doing it for all of us.
My husband and I are parents. We have five children. We didn’t know we were going to be business owners, but we knew we wanted something more for us and for our children. We knew we were trading 24 hours in a day for more time with our children in the future. That was the sacrifice we had to make to be here today. All of that and much more helped and strengthen me to become the businesswoman and owner I am. What I realize now is that things aren’t always black and white, good, or bad, or all or nothing. Change is a journey and luckily, this has turned out to be a great adventure. Michelle Obama said, “There is no magic to achievement. It’s really about hard work, choices, and persistence.” This resonates with me so much and it rings true to me because I’ve put myself in those situations where I had to make hard choices, gone through every step I needed to to get me here, learned from the bottom, and have done it.
After operating for six months with success as a food truck, we moved into a brick-and-mortar, built our first shop, and opened our first authentic and fun bubble tea shop in Eastern Idaho. We have been operating for almost five years. We currently have two corporate stores in Rexburg, Idaho and Orem, Utah and have now expand to Fresno, California. We are growing and expanding.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
If anybody had told you running a business is like eating candy, of course, they’ve lied. Running a business is not easy at all, never ever smooth sailing from the beginning. It’s like a marathon. We needed to give it everything we had, and that last mile is the toughest part. You have this long to-do-list and you just keep staring at it like, where do we even begin? The list just keeps growing. We don’t know how to do this or know someone who would be kind enough to walk us through it. It hasn’t always been a smooth road. Some of those struggles were not having enough capital so we had to spend all our savings which was a scary thing to do. We didn’t have any family members who could help babysit so we could get our business up and running on time since winter and snow was coming in. My husband and I will be at the shop all day and all night with our children. They would go everywhere with us in our family van. To the stores to grab paint, to get sheetrock, to lunch or dinner, to the shop to build tables and benches, to pick up tools, you name it. They have seen it all. We felt really bad for our children, but we knew it was important for them to see their parents do something they love and work hard for it. Our children were our biggest supporters and heroes in all of this.
When COVID hit, it was a really scary time. We had just opened in 2019 and had to close business for almost a whole month in 2020. We lost all our employees, and it was just going to be me and my husband. We weren’t sure if we were going to make it. We thought about all the possibilities. When we opened Boba Luv, I’ve told my husband, there is no going back, and we were going to do everything in our power to stay open and be successful. We did just that and it helped pulled us through. Nothing else mattered at the time than to have each other, our family, and hold onto what we poured our savings into.
I am so glad it brought us here today.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Boba Luv is a new bubble tea shop and brand. We are one of the first of many boba brands that originated here in the United States and have started growing consistently. Boba Luv is Hmong-owned. We offer a variety of tea drinks from fruit teas, milk teas, galaxy drinks, smoothies, fruit juice, slushies, and specialty and seasonal drinks. We specialize in non-tea or non-caffeinated drinks with the option of still having your drinks caffeinated. We provide a way for our customers to be able to customize their own boba drinks to their liking but also still stay true to the traditional boba taste. We offer several types of toppings such as the traditional tapioca (boba), crystal boba, lychee jellies, popping bobas, grass jellies, aloe vera, etc. We also provide delicious appetizers and foods such as Taiwanese popcorn chicken and shrimp, fried calamari, Thai pancakes, Hmong food, and desserts such as waffles. Boba is a fascinating drink but also an exquisite dessert. Bubble tea is so versatile that there are innumerable ways to find, design, or build a drink that’s right for everybody. The options are endless.
Boba Luv really stands for people who has a passion and love for boba. It is a place where you can create memories, have fun, enjoy your drinks and snacks, and a safe place where families or anyone can be together. It’s a place of happiness. What sets us apart from other bubble tea shops are our own home recipes. We concoct and create our own drinks from high quality ingredients to using fresh fruits, and each of our drink is made with a lot of love. People of passion. We don’t buy or use other big companies and franchises’ recipes. We are our own.
We know starting a business isn’t easy and there isn’t much leverage to begin with so we are all about supporting other small businesses who could grow into something more later and could help change the world. That is the direction we are heading, the American dream, right? Through this whole experience, we have met so many wonderful people, have become friends with, and network with other business owners. It is so inspiring to me to hear and learn of other people and their stories. There is so much to be grateful for and so much to learn.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I feel like a lot of people look at me and my husband as a very successful couple, but they don’t know and see that to be where we are today a lot of hard work, late nights, rejections, sacrifices, discipline, criticism, doubts, and failures have been present all the time. We go through and face these things on a daily. A lot of people don’t know that I used to work at a bubble tea shop. It’s where my passion sparked and my love for being a barista started. They think my work is hard and overwhelming but I actually really enjoy my work and what I do for Boba Luv.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bobaluvofficial/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bobaluvofficial
Image Credits
Kachia Vang
