A panic erupted on the West Coast this week. About a drink.
This happened when liquor lovers learned that tapioca, the starch used in the sweet, round, sticky black bubbles – or pearls – that are the popular topping in the popular bobate drink, was scarce.
“I was shocked,” said Leanne Yuen, a longtime booze drinker and student at the University of California, Irvine. “What am I going to do now?”
The looming boba shortage is another sign of how the pandemic has shattered global supply chains, improved industries and created scarce goods from toilet paper and ketchup to electronics. In this case, an increase in pent-up demand for products assembled abroad, coupled with a shortage of workers due to coronavirus cases or quarantine protocols, caused a month-long maritime congestion in ports in Los Angeles and San Francisco and ships left delivering goods Asia – including tapioca – awaits at sea.
Boba or bubble tea, a drink that can be made with milk or green or black tea with fruit flavor, has its origins in Taiwan and became very popular in America during the 2000s. Boba suppliers in San Francisco Bay who have little tapioca said the loads of fully formed bobs came from Taiwan, while the stock of cassava root, used to make tapioca, came from Thailand and islands in the Pacific Ocean came.
“It’s all kept at the docks,” says Arianna Hansen, a sales representative for Fanale Drinks, based in Hayward, California, which supplies boba to thousands of stores across the country. Mrs. Hansen said shipments have been backed up for several months and that the company’s existing stock of tapioca is dangerously small.
“It was definitely frustrating – some people were upset about us, but at the same time it’s not really our fault,” she said. Hansen said.
There is no sign that the delay of the ship will decrease any time soon. According to data from the Marine Exchange of Southern California, the number of cargo ships at anchor was waiting to dock in Los Angeles or Long Beach. It dropped to 19 ships on Thursday, still far from the usual zero or one ship that was the normal prepandemic, said Kip Louttit, executive director of the exchange.
Massive cargo ships can take a week or longer to unload, said Mr. Louttit said. Five other ships float out to sea because there is no room to fit them in the bay. He said it was an almost unprecedented backup; vessels have not had to drift while waiting since 2004.
The situation is also tight in San Francisco, where 20 ships are waiting at anchor and another 19 are sailing “offshore”, compared to the usual eight or nine at anchor, said Capt. Lynn Korwatch, executive director of the area’s marine exchange, said. .
“The situation is extremely unusual,” she said.
Leadway International, another major boba supplier in Hayward, also said tapioca stocks are low as shipments arrive slower than usual. Edward Shen, director of the company’s business development, said he did not want to call it a “shortage” because of the fears that boba stores could move to stock up on tapioca and make matters worse.
“Store owners are panicking, so they are probably ordering more than they need,” he said. Shen said.
Mrs. Hansen said she expects supply to return to normal by summer.
Meanwhile, anxious boba shop owners are looking for tapioca everywhere.
“It’s very stressful – no boba means no sales,” said Aaron Qian, owner of Tea Hut, a boba store with three branches in the Bay. “If you do not have a boba, they do not want the tea. They just walk away. ‘
Mr. Qian, 32, said two of his suppliers had already been sold out and that the other two had rationed the tapioca he could buy each week. If he does not soon find more grandparents, Mr. Qian said his stores are out within two weeks.
Despite the pandemic, Mr. Qian said, business has flourished, because with other social venues, drinking boba is one of the few options for ‘cheap fun’. Now he may have to temporarily shut down and lay off employees.
Brian Tran, a co-owner of Honeybear Boba in San Francisco, said he was also desperately looking for more tapioca. He expects to run out by the end of next week if he can not replenish his stock.
“A boba shop without boba is like a car dealer without cars to sell,” he said. Tran said. “It’s like a steakhouse without steak.”
Boba Guys, one of the most successful boba chains in the country, said in an Instagram post this month that some boba stores are running out of tapioca balls and that others will follow in the next few weeks. The owners of Boba Guys also operate the American Boba Company, which manufactures and sells tapioca pearls to other stores across the country.
The boba shortage, previously reported by The San Francisco Chronicle, has boba fans in a panic. A report sharing the news in the Facebook group Subtle Asian Traits, a gathering place for Asian people around the world, drew 10,000 comments and messages of dismay and sadness.
Boba is “something that is translated into many Asian cultures,” said Zoe Imansjah, a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an administrator of the Subtle Asian Traits group. “Something so simple can bring a lot of people together.”
Me. Yuen, 21, gets bobcats once or twice a week and sells bobcats online. She said she grew up at a boba store near her home in southern San Francisco with her parents, and now considers it a great way for Boba to hang out with friends.
“Many of my Asian-American friends will bond over boba,” she said. Yuen said, whose family hails from Hong Kong. ‘Hong Kong has very good milk tea. It brings us back to our roots in a sense. ‘
Boba, however, is not just a delicacy in California, and the news of a shortage has reverberated around the United States.
Khoa Vu, a 28-year-old Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota, said he drinks boba two or three times a week – peach oolong tea with boba is his order. He was afraid he would have to announce the news about the shortage of his 4-year-old daughter.
‘It’s a weekend thing after we finish dinner; I say to my child, ‘If you eat well, I’ll take you to the boba shop,’ ‘Mr Vu said. “It’s going to be a shock to her.”
Boba fanatics do not lose all hope. Smaller boba suppliers such as iBEV, which sells to about 100 stores, could face the shortage. Carley Olund, an office manager at iBEV, said the company was ready for shipping delays and that there was enough tapioca stock to get through.
And Sharetea, a top chain with dozens of stores in 20 states, said it did not have a shortage.
For the boba drinkers affected by deficiencies, it may be a chance to try different additives in their tea, such as cheesecake, fruit jelly or egg pudding.
“Maybe I’m trying to take a break from the tapioca to relieve the pressure,” Yuen said.