vitaminboba — Restaurant in Calgary

TLDR: don’t come here unless you want to wait 5 years for overpriced average bubble tea/food. Decor was nice.

I came in and it was completely empty. I had to wait for someone to come out of the back as I had questions about the sizes. I ordered promptly and without causing any fuss. Although the decor and gift shop helped ease my boredom while I waited, I ended up waiting 25 MINUTES after I ordered my bubble tea and I saw 3 girls in the back, not making my drink. No one apologized for the wait time and I really don’t understand why it took so long when I didn’t see any efforts to make my drink in a timely manner. I only ordered one mango slush and I decided to get an onigiri as it was advertised as freshly made. An old looking pre made onigiri was then put in the microwave and nuked to all hell. It tastes mushy and old; all the time in the microwave did not help. The drink was average, but was not worth the price or the 25 MINUTES I waited on a Wednesday afternoon when there’s no other customers besides me.

UPDATE: Since I can’t directly reply to the owner’s response, I will add my follow-up here.

I want to specify the wait was longer than 15 minutes. I have bank receipts showing when I paid for the drink and when I left, so please do not invalidate my experience by claiming otherwise.

While waiting, I watched the staff. About 10 minutes after I arrived, a father and daughter placed an order. The father already had a drink from another shop, so at most they ordered one drink here. Yet I saw an unusually large amount of mango being chopped and blended — far more than needed for one order. I don’t know why so much was prepared, and it only delayed my own drink even further. There’s even a chance it wasn’t for a customer at all but for the staff themselves, which would be an even bigger problem. With three staff members present, there’s no reason my single drink should have taken that long.

Regarding pearls: I used to work in a Japanese establishment and know how they’re prepped. Cooking pearls at 3pm makes little sense unless the shop was unprepared, ran out, or reused old pearls from the previous day. A reputable shop should have fresh pearls ready each morning. It’s unacceptable for three staff to be caught off guard by a basic topping at that hour.

As for the onigiri, please do not advertise it as “freshly made” if it isn’t. Traditionally it’s served at room temperature or chilled — not microwaved for over 10 minutes. Heating it that way ruined the texture, made it mushy, and only highlighted that it was not freshly prepared. A truly fresh onigiri should taste clean, simple, and balanced, not like something reheated from earlier or made days in advance. Calling that “fresh” is misleading to customers who know...

We waited in line for over an hour outside in the wind during its grand opening for the $1 drinks, but by the time we could order, it was around 4:11pm, so we couldn’t get the $1 drinks. It would have been fine if they just gave us a piece of paper acknowledging that we arrived before 4pm, but I that didn’t happen. We ended up decided to just go with the buy one get one free promotion, but we ended up having to wait for our drinks for over an hour. While waiting, everyone was crammed in the store and the employees started giving out free drinks that people hadn’t picked up yet. We spent almost 3 hours waiting, and personally, the drinks are not worth waiting in line for 3 hours. The drinks itself were not bad, but there are other places with better and faster service. That being said, this was during the grand opening, so it may be better on a regular day. However, all the orders taken were done by the customers using a machine. Entering in the buy one get one free promo code and figuring out how it worked was confusing (had to get the same exact order for both drinks), which was most likely why people waited in line for so long. To their credit, when you spoke up and told them about how long you were waiting, they would speed up your order and try to get it...

I went for the grand opening on the first day, and it was unfortunately not a pleasant experience. My main problem was that I was not able to get the 1$ promotion after waiting in line for 2 hours (before ordering) I stood in line right after 2 and got into the store around 4:05pm, however since it was past 4 I was not able to order this promotional drink. I really wish this would have been made clearer on the instagram or near the entrance so I didn’t have to waste my time :( I also tried to order the buy 1 get 1 half (since I already waited for so long) but at the exact moment that I was ordering at the kiosk, it showed that 4/5 of the options were unavailable, and I was allergic to the last option. So I was stuck paying full price for another bubble tea, which I wouldn’t have minded but it took another 1 hour of waiting to get what was supposed to be a 1$ bubble tea. I also wouldn’t have minded it as much but I saw approximately 6 people who were behind me in line get served first. However, the taste of the bubble tea was good and I understand that this is not an easy event to pull off but I wish it was more organized I’m debating coming back to give it another chance but the experience is hard to...