Lollicup Coffee & Tea

At a point when countless boba shops have soaked Orange County in tea leaves and tapioca balls, we’ve become especially grateful for small stores that care more about maintaining quality (say, Fourtea and HN Tea) than becoming The Next Big Brand.™ Lollicup is on the opposite side of this divide. As an early U.S. player in the boba tea craze, the Chino-based company chased rapid growth, making its trademarks available to anyone who was willing to pay licensing fees. Unsurprisingly, this led to inconsistent “Lollicup” experiences and poor control over the quality of their drinks, disappointing consumers, forcing store closures, and provoking legal actions by the State of California.

In our case, a Lollicup’s mediocre ingredients temporarily broke our interest in brown sugar boba drinks, an invention that other chains – including Tiger Sugar and The Alley – have thrived on producing properly. Other customers have noted that Lollicup found ways to mess up many other recipes and ingredients (from sea salt cream to grass jelly to mango), selling drinks that were flat, watery, or flavorless.

We can’t say that every Lollicup location has the same problems, but quality issues still seem to be persistent – many stores hae closed, and most of the chain’s remaining Orange County locations have weak Yelp ratings and plenty of complaints. After a few meh experiences, we gave up on this chain – and the location closest to us no longer exists. We don’t hate the brand, but it needs to get its stores’ drink quality under control; this will ultimately make the difference as to whether this chain contracts further or turns itself around.