Making a puncture with his/her straw, instead of a traditional opening on the top of a lid, a customer sips up chewy balls with their blueberry flavored tea. Bubble Bee Tea, a new business in Grand Blanc, is bringing a new form dessert to Genesee County.

“My mom and dad, we are a local family out of Grand Blanc,” General Manager Karrie Laws said. “We stumbled across the idea one day and we went to Colorado for some training on it and we thought the Grand Blanc could use an exciting, new drink place.”

Currently, it is the only juice business in Grand Blanc. Other than Bubble Bee Tea, the nearest place to get bubble tea is at Cafe Rhema in Flint.

“It’s a sweet refreshing cool drink with flavor bursts, or jellies, in it,” Laws said. “It’s something you have to experience first hand to really understand it. It’s an exciting drinking experience that’s fully customizable. For someone that never had it I would recommend the mango milk tea, everything mango sells phenomenally and the milk tea is really sweet and creamy. It’s really good with the passion fruit bubbles.”

PHOTO McKenzie Lookebill
Originating in Taiwan, bubble or milk tea gained popularity in the United States in 1980, according to the National Public Radio. Bubble Bee Tea opened at the beginning of this year for customers in the area to try bubble tea.

“I got a strawberry green tea with blueberry bubbles,” senior Margaret Berry said. ”It was definitely unlike anything I have ever tried before. It was kind of weird but tasted really good because when you drink it, you taste the tea but then the bubble pops and you get a burst of the flavor bubble is. I’ve only had it once but I would definitely go again because I want to try more flavors.”

With a variety of different combinations, a drink can come in two different sizes: regular and large for $5 or less.

“We make our tapioca balls fresh every eight hours and the tea is brewed fresh every six hours,” Laws said. “We have a distributor for the pearls and the jellies but a lot of it is made fresh here daily. So you begin by taking a base like the flavored iced teas, slushy, snow base, mocha blast, or the milk tea base. Depending on if you are looking for something thicker and heavier we recommend the snow, but if you are looking for something refreshing, the slushie, black tea, or green tea isthe way to go. Then you pick your flavor, you can pick up to two, like strawberry pomegranate with green tea base, or you can stick to one. Then you pick your bubbles we have the traditional tapioca bubbles, we have flavor bursting bubbles and jellies. Jellies are more of a candy constancy, whereas the bubbles are flavor burst that pop in your mouth. Then the tapioca is a gummy bear consistency.”

Bubble Bee Tea is open Sunday to Thursday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Friday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.