#Starbucks calorie calculator license

I bookmark all my favorite places and pin them. My Google Maps has 300 pin drops all dedicated to boba. If any friend has a new boba recommendation or question, they hit me up. My friends egg me on and are always hitting me up for recommendations. How do your friends and family feel about your love for boba? Sun is great for its homemade boba, and Urban Ritual has a creme brulee pudding milk tea. In Cupertino, there’s Lucky Tea it’s good for a chain. It’s a San Jose mom-and-pop, but it’s kind of like a nightclub. Sometimes I rotate between lychee, grass jelly, aloe, or other toppings. For toppings, I don’t get boba every single time. I tend to like boba that isn’t too sweet, so having less sweetness and good tea flavor is important for me. It’s really hard to choose one because I go to different boba shops in the South Bay for whatever drink I’m in the mood for.

#Starbucks calorie calculator license

Nataraj Das’s license plate reads “BOBA DDY.” Nataraj Das What’s your favorite drink?

I only got boba by myself one time last year. It’s an opportunity to spend time with friends and bond. You would have thought that it would have been very easy to ramp up my boba ordering during that time, but boba is more than just a drink or a number of drinks I need to buy. It’s an opportunity to spend time with friends and bond.” Have you been drinking it even more during COVID times?ĭuring COVID, there were so many boba shops that allowed online ordering and contactless pickup outside, so it made it so easy to swing by and pick up the drinks and to go straight home, especially when everything was closed. “Boba is more than just a drink or a number of drinks I need to buy. I don’t have a specific boba fund or do any special budgeting for my boba obsession since in the grand scheme of things, it’s cheaper than alcohol, clubbing, or a Starbucks-a-day habit. In 2021, I had 203 cups and spent $948.90 after taking into consideration coupons and any discounts I accrued at certain shops. In 2020, I had 137 cups of boba and spent a total of $676.79. What were the results after you started keeping track? There are even some places that are $8-plus per drink, but that is a bit too crazy to me. I definitely go to bougier places now - I’m a fan of Yifang. Now, I order $5, $6 boba, and I don’t think twice about it. Has your taste changed since high school?īack in high school, we could only afford 99-cent Quickly boba. After being asked 15 or 20 times by friends on how many drinks I had a year and how much I spent, I finally decided to keep track of everything, and that’s how the idea was born. I remember paying 99 cents a cup for boba at Quickly at that time.

I went to Mills High School in Millbrae, where there was a large Asian community, so it was a regular thing to go to a boba shop and play cards there after school. Nataraj Das: I’ve been drinking boba since I was in high school. Eater: When did you start drinking boba, and how did this extensive spreadsheet come about? (From the onset of the pandemic until now, he has spent a total of $948.90 and drank a total of 203 boba drinks.) Das wore his UC Boba Department of Milk Tea Studies shirt along with his boba milk tea AirPods while speaking with Eater LA about his boba fixation, boba industry trends, and future predictions as a seasoned boba superfan. His friends tease him for his obsession, but to Das, boba is a drink that has kept him sated for close to 15 years, beginning in high school.īoba shops, a primary cultural gathering spot for Asian American youth in the early 2000s, continue to be the destination of choice for Das to connect with friends now that he has more disposable income than he did as a high schooler. While other millennials spend hours on Instagram bookmarking the hottest brunches in town, Das is busy organizing his Google pins and spreadsheets on the newest boba shops near him. His spreadsheets break down the total number of boba drinks he’s had, total cost after rewards and coupons, and the store, city, topping, and tea type he orders.

His Google Maps app is filled with hundreds of pins of boba shops he has tried and those he notes as wanting to try he started his meticulous record-keeping after friends began asking him how much boba he drank a year (an estimated 200 cups, on average).ĭas has kept thorough spreadsheets of his boba purchases since 2020 and releases his annual record keeping online at the end of each year. He owns a custom “Bobaddy’’ license plate as well as a three-foot-tall boba plushie that rides shotgun in his car. Nataraj Das, a 31-year-old audiovisual engineer who lives in San Jose, California, creates detailed spreadsheets of every boba drink he’s bought in the last two years.