Boba Bear — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Great space, really fun menu and the hookah is as amazing! HOWEVER, management needs to do a better job and making sure they are staffed properly, in order to accommodate all of its guests and making sure orders are being made in a timely manner. As a past server I understand managements concern with staffing to many people, because they think they might have a slow day, but it’s best to have at least three employees working at all times. Reasons being:

The menu is great and has so many options to customize and use different glasses for each drink. This means you need to have a designated employee only handling drinks. Having one person take orders, make custom drinks, prepare hookah (which you can also customize with mixed flavors) deliver the drinks, check in with guests, buss the tables and cash them out is completely ridiculous. Again, you need one person handling guests

The minimum amount of employees there should be at least 3 . Even when the restaurant only has 5 guests that’s still a hand full for just one person. Let’s not forget they also have to go window where there were a line of guests waiting to put in orders.

You need one employee handling drinks, the other employee serving on the floor and another employee preparing the hookah/bar assistant. So that when it’s busy everyone has a designated area and it will run more efficiently. This place, from what I’ve observed is becoming busier and having anything less than the MINIMUM of three employees running the floor is ridiculous.

By no means is this the employees fault at all they did the best they could with what little recourses and support they had. This entire review is for the management specifically. You cannot be stingy with the number of employees you have working. You need three people at least. Customer service is so important and if you can’t create a great easy experience for the guests you really won’t have any business. Please take this advice and run with it.

This place is a great idea and has the potential to be great but if you aren't delighting tasks accordingly your not going to have happy employees and customers.

I hope the next visit is a different experience than what we had. I’d love to bring more people here and share this place with others via social media. But if management can’t support its employees by providing them with the right amount of support and resources this place won’t last very long unfortunately.

NOTE: If by the middle of the day you realize you don’t have any business then you can decide to let just one person go. No more than one. Also consider tracking your daily customer activity and comparing it to each month, week and year. So you know how to predict your flow of customers . BUT, no matter what you always need no less than three employees.

Thanks! Hope this helps would love to see this place keep growing!

Giving it three stars only because, you were missing the other two employees. Otherwise I’m sure the service would have been way better! And probably would’ve gotten our drinks on time we waited like 30+ minutes for two drinks...

"The Last Drop" Arcane Cafe was really disappointing, underwhelming, and lackluster😭 NOT WORTH a reservation or the $20 for each drink. Here's my experience if anyone wants to read.

Was super excited and booked a reservation in december. Got there and he outside sign "the last drop" looked cool until I got inside. I did a double take to see if i was at the right place since it felt so bland. Everything was just dark and dull and brown. I know it's steampunk themed too but add some color like the classic colors from jinx or more neon signs. The only sign visible was all the way the back and the posters didnt pop.

No entertainment or anything interactive besides ONE tv showing arcane clips and the clunky punching machine 😭 no cutouts anything else all I did was just stare at the brown wall.

We ordered drinks but I received a vial bottle which has super faint letters of "arcane". Asked if I could swap out my vial for another better one (compared quality to my friend's vial) and they did swap which was great 🙏 UNTIL the new one had tons of glue strings. I thought it was hair from how curly and abundant it was but it was everywhere and just kinda made me not drink it. My friend finished their vial and the bottom of their vial is disgusting and covered in glue. The painting on the vials was also awful, chipped, and messy. :/

There wasnt a lot of merch either besides GINORMOUS posters and a expensive apron and a cup. No keychains, shirts, fan art from the community or small artists, nothing small for fans who don't want to carry anything huge/heavy. Maybe even a tiny via shimmer keychain would have worked but I guess not. 😐

There are other better themed cafes that put more effort. Even one in DTLA that is probably HALF the size of this cafe did a better job with their Persona 5 collab 😭

TLDR;

Visually dead Barely visible letters on cheaply made temu cup covered in hot glue Lack of anything interactive Narrow merch...

Boba Bear is a cafe and hookah bar in Korea Town. The atmosphere has a darker, relaxed feel that caters to the younger generation. With hookah, food, boba, and drinks, they are an interesting shop that tries target multiple niches. Although, I think that because they do so, they fail in multiple regards and, thus, I cannot recommend coming here.

For their shisha, I didn't partake in it, but my friend said that it was a "meh" experience. She got their basic deal for about $19, but wasn't impressed with their flavors for what she paid. For their boba, I thought that it was tremendously sub-par. If I were to rate this place solely for their boba, I would honestly give them 0 stars. The boba, since that was the only component that I had, was too sugary and hardly tasted like jasmine milk tea. On their website, which advertises being an ideal location for "boba enthusiasts", I was severely disappointed. I live in the San Gabriel Valley where boba cafes are plentiful and are known to be good; otherwise, competition would run them dry. When I came to Boba Bear, the drink came out to be about $6.5 for a 16 oz drink inside of a plastic cup. If I were to add boba along with tax and the surcharge, I would be paying about $9 dollars for the drink.

The service that we had was terrible as well. Our party of four tried to flag down a waiter to pay for our items, but they didn't come for approximately 7 minutes. Even with one of our party members locking eyes with one of the waiters and trying to flag them down, it didn't work either. I personally cannot comment on their food or their drinks, but from what I had, I do not plan on coming here again unless someone...