Sweet Lab Boba Tea & Desserts — Restaurant in Lodi

In short, there are many items that need to be resolved for this place to stay in business. The quality of their product will make me a repeat customer, but the frequency of my visits will depend on their ability to overcome their many flaws.

My family visited twice on opening day--once at noon and again at 6:30PM. In both cases, there were less than six people in line and we waited over 20 minutes each time to just place our order. After ordering the first time, our drink order was fulfilled in under 5 minutes. During our evening visit, we waited 15 minutes for our ice cream after ordering. The wait time the second time around was due to the lack of employees, and one person playing "one man band" behind the counter (answering questions from both customers and the untrained cashier, giving samples, scooping ice cream, calling out orders, and running cups back and forth from the register to the kitchen).

The things that need to change ASAP and shouldn't cost the company significant dollars: Two employees (cashier and "runner") are not enough to take care of customers. Have more staff behind the counter to answer questions, provide ice cream samples, and start taking drink/ice cream orders before customers reach the cashier. During slower hours, these employees can also clean the bathrooms, empty trash, and interact with customers (rather than just apologize for taking so long). Doing the little things goes a long way for the customer experience. Train your cashiers on how to use the POS system properly. This creates a large bottleneck. Have your drink stickers print directly to the kitchen area. Currently, the labels print at the cashier, they have to put the labels on cups, and then have them run them to the kitchen window (about 15-20 feet away).

Changes that would be nice: If things remain busy, run two cash registers. Widen the section for those standing in line. There is currently very narrow standing room and it would be a nightmare for someone with claustrophobia or young kids. Open earlier. People may not want ice cream at 10:00am, but they will definitely would drink boba tea at that time. Stay open later (til 9:00 or 10:00pm?). Your most likely demographic is 15-30 year olds---think about it. Most boba shops in the area stay open until 9-11pm on weeknights Add a Vietnamese Iced Coffee DRINK to the menu. The VIC ice cream is awesome... but I'd come back 3x a week if there was a drink to go with it. Don't charge customers extra for adding a regular boba. "Boba" is in your name, yet you add an up-charge when people want it in their drink. Specialty add-ins deserve to be marked up. Add a customer loyalty program to reward repeat visitors. Don't raise your drink prices. Currently Sweet Lab is on the high end of pricing for their teas. Most of your competitors are charging $2.75-3.50 for regular sized milk tea (boba included) with an extra $0.50-0.75 if they are ordering a larger size. Run regular specials. This can encourage new customers to come in and get returning customers to try new drinks/ice creams.

I plan to go again in the next several days and hopefully will be able to change my review for the better. With the right changes, this local business should be...

As soon as we walked in the guy at the front rolled his eyes because we're 9 people. He told us to move out of the way to not block the entrance which I understand. My sister and boyfriend ordered and he had an attitude... I go ahead and order and same attitude. I asked him if the drink on the picture is called dragonade or what was it called so I can order... he didn't even turn around and said yes it is so I said yes give me the same as the picture. 40 minutes go by people come and go with their drinks and after a while he asks: are you guys waiting for something or???? We told him he hasn't gotten our drinks and he went and made them himself. Of course the drink I had asked for was wrong because he didn't turn around to look at what I was pointing so he went and remade it. He got mad and tossed the straw like we did something wrong.... MAYBE if he didn't have his earbuds on he would be able to listen. Also the lack of people working there makes everything frustrating. They had a lot of costumers and only one person making the drinks... that's why we were understanding at first and would've been even more understanding because mistakes happen but he was just rude from the beginning. Drinks didn't have a lot of flavor either so this place sucks we will be driving to Stockton or Elk Grove just to get...

Even though you wait like 15 minutes for your drink and sometimes they run out of certain boba options it’s still a really great spot. People don’t understand what goes on in the back when thinking about how long they’re waiting or the fact that the ingredients used to make boba come from another country when they get mad that there’s no more boba for them. Another thing to consider is that the drink you order is being made fresh. Of course it’s going to take some time to be made. A little patience goes a long way especially considering how amazing all of their drinks taste! All in all this place is great, a lot better than some other places I’ve been😁👍 it makes me mad to think some of these customers have no compassion or empathy. They should work a full shift at Sweet Lab themselves so they’ll think twice about complaining for things that the workers...