‘It’s like a dessert’: Bubble tea on the rise in SD

BRANDON, S.D. (KELO) – A new beverage option is bubbling up in Brandon as 9999 Boba expands to the town.

The restaurant serves bubble tea, also called boba, which is a popular drink with a fruit or milk tea base, mixed with chewy tapioca pearls, bursting popping boba or jelly. 9999 Boba opened its Sioux Falls location in 2022 and due to its success, expanded to Brandon.

“They’re happy that we came to this community,” owner Johnny Pahthaem said. “A majority of them don’t even know what boba is, but then once they try it, they love it.”

Annika Johnson currently lives in Sioux Falls and works in Brandon. She’s from Minneapolis where the drink has gained popularity and says she likes finding new boba restaurants in the area.

“I like that there’s the aspect of the drink and something you can chew,” she said. “I really like textured things. So, I love that you can have like popping pearls, tapioca pearls, things like that and you get a yummy treat.”

Johnson was visiting the Sioux Falls location March 15 when she learned of the new location in Brandon.

“It’s actually across the street (from where she works),” Johnson said. “I haven’t gone there yet, this is my first time being here. I’m excited to try that out. I think that’ll be really cool for kind of small town Brandon.”

Pahthaem decided to open up a second location after seeing the amount of Brandon residents coming to the Sioux Falls store.

“We had a lot of regulars from Brandon that actually go to the Sioux Falls locations, which kind of motivated me even more to open one up in Brandon,” he said. “I know Brandon is a growing, small community also.”

Another reason Pahthaem expanded was because the Sioux Falls location was doing so well. He attributes his location’s success, and boba’s popularity as a whole, to younger fans of the drink.

“I think a lot of it is the new generation type of drink, it’s like Starbucks,” he said. “I think it’s more of the younger crowd, but now the older crowd is getting into it too. I mean, it’s like a dessert basically, that’s how I take it.”

Bubble tea originated in Taiwan in the 1980s, the World Coffee Portal reported . The owners of a popular tea room experimented with mixing cold tea with tapioca-based pudding and later brought the drink to the U.S., California specifically.

Pahthaem grew up in California, where there was a “boba shop on every corner” during the 90s. When he moved to South Dakota, he realized there weren’t many locations and decided to start his own.

“I tried creating boba, tried to put some drinks together and it was successful so, bless,” he said.

The name, 9999 Boba, comes from the highest purity percentage of gold, 99.99%. Pahthaem is Laotian and gold is an important part of Laos culture, he said.

Sioux Falls has two other full bubble tea shops. Tasteas , on 41st Street, opened in 2017 and Taichi near the Empire Mall opened in the summer of 2023. Pahthaem said he will be focusing on the two locations he has now, but hopes to add more locations around the area in the future.

“It’s gonna be great. I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be a big industry,” he said.

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