New Dessert, Bubble Tea Shop To Open In Coolidge Corner

BROOKLINE, MA — A new joint dessert and bubble tea spot are set to open in a shared space in Coolidge Corner along Beacon Street sometime soon.

A sign proclaiming: ZZ Dessert and OneZo went up this week in the space that briefly housed a beauty supply shop, next to Bap Korean Bistro.

ZZ Dessert and the Taiwan-based tea shop One Zo, also have shared locations in Allston on Brighton Avenue, in North Quincy and Chinatown in Boston.

They specialize in fresh boba, or chewy tapioca pearls as a drink topping, made right in the store.

“This one is particularly special because they do handcrafted boba, and they do variations and different types of drinks that originated from Taiwan,” Bozan Yang, who was speaking on behalf of One Zo, told the Select Board back in January.

The chain has locations in California and New York, and the Coolidge Corner spot would be the seventh location to open in the state, after recent openings in Allston, Malden, Quincy, Chinatown, Waltham and Worcester, according to the company.

For some, this may be reminiscent of the great self-serve yogurt craze of the early 2010s, where self-serve yogurt shops seemed to be on every corner around Brookline. Those have since disappeared, but bubble tea seems to be the new popular snack spot.

Bubble tea — the name given to a variety of milk or fruit teas with chewy tapioca bubbles or "boba"added as a topping — started popping up on the West Coast in the 1990s after becoming popular in Taiwan. It spread from there.

Today, according to the trade group Tea Association of the USA, some 87 percent of millennials in the US drink tea.

The tea spot joins a number of other tea shops in town hoping to capitalize on that popularity, including the space formerly occupied by Gen Sou En, and RoyalTea on Beacon Street. If you pass through Cleveland Circle, you know there's the popular chain Kung Fu Tea that's been there for a couple of years. PokeGarden in Brookline Village and TBaar and Shinmio Tea in St. Mary's both also serve bubble tea.

• Japanese Tea House Gen Sou En
• Royal Tea on Beacon Street in Coolidge corner opened last year.
• Drink Me Bubble Tea Shop - opened in fall 2020
• The Shared Tea - to open summer 2021

The shops plan to be open between 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Yang told the select board in January they planned to take the temperature of everyone who came into the building as a part of their coronavirus protocol.