Boba X - Mall of America — Restaurant in Bloomington

We were with a large group of children at the mall on a busy weekend. This was a birthday celebration trip for one of the children so, they all wanted to get boba as a treat. Having never been to this boba brand before, I was disappointed to find that everything was automated and appeared to be cash-free. All orders are placed via kiosks, not with a human. The drink menu options do not include ingredients so, it was tricky knowing exactly what would be in each drink. You can select your sugar levels though. Each child had questions but, there were only two employees working and they were busy filling the kiosk orders so, we didn't want to disturb them with many questions. [It was quite busy here when we stopped.] Being children, none of them had credit cards, which the kiosks required for payment prior to sending the orders. Again, this was a huge burden on the adults there as we all had to put several individual orders on our own credit cards and take the cash from the children for repayment. I definitely did NOT love that. You also are required to put in a phone number so you can receive a text when your order is ready. I'm not a fan of providing my phone number to every store I visit and found that to be very impersonal also. After putting our phone numbers in for all the different orders, we waited for the drinks. The orders came out quickly and the children really enjoyed them, which is why I gave three stars instead of two. I gotta say: this push to replace people with technology is completely lost on me. Honestly, I typically avoid establishments with kiosks instead of cashiers and cashless-only payments. I may be in the minority but, that's never stopped me before. I don't think we'll return here as there are so many other...

before i get into my main review, i would like to say one big issue that i noticed when ordering from this boba shop; that being that they are using ai generated “art” to advertise some of their drinks, especially for the easter specials. that was a big red flag to me as an artist myself and i really wish the owner would’ve actually put some effort into getting actual art to advertise their drinks.

i am a big brown sugar boba tea lover and i was excited to try the boba at this location, as i have tried it at niko niko (another boba shop at the moa) and really enjoyed it. sadly, i was a bit disappointed with my order. for some reason, my brown sugar boba tea had a very strong matcha flavor to it. there was no one else there at the moment and it looked like brown sugar boba tea, so i don’t think my order got mixed up. i don’t like matcha so this was a bit hard for me to drink and felt like a waste of my money. as for the brown sugar boba pearls, the texture was good but there wasn’t much of a brown sugar flavor to them. some of the pearls weren’t fully cooked through and still hard in the center, which was a very odd sensory experience. the service was fast but for $9, i was expecting something better. i think i will be sticking with niko niko...

Bought two stuffed animals at the kiosk. We asked if they had the large size in stock before ordering to which they said yes. Then they said they only had the mini size available after we paid. They said we could take the display one and get a refund for one to which we obliged. Then the (must’ve been) manager said no we can’t take the display one and said we take the little ones or none. And so we asked for refund. After about 5 minutes of them trying to figure out a refund, they only gave us $10 back. I double checked with cashier and she said no she gave us the full amount. Well, we just checked our bank statement and they didn’t refund the full amount of money. These people are thieves. And as a local who frequents mall of America, I will not be returning and in fact, will be telling my friends and family to stay cautioned...