Tiger Sugar — Restaurant in New York

Want to be a complete scumbag and unfairly skip the line with the employees' permission? Then keep reading below.

The wait in line in long.That's a fact. But I personally feel it's a justified one since the shop is so small, limited staff and the quality of the drinks more than makes up for it. I waited on line for approximately 50 - 55 mins to order. The line had around 40 - 45 people with 3-5 people dropping out. After you order, you wait approximately 8 - 12 mins to get your drinks depending on how much people before you ordered (there's a 4 drink limit per person). I got the Brown Sugar Boba/Pearl w Cream and the Black Tea Latte with Cream and Boba (they charge extra if you request boba in your tea latte, 5.50 exc tax). Both taste amazing. The 1st drink is rich tasting (cause it's all milk and cream) and the difference in the boba/pearl textures makes for an interesting drink. The black tea latte is not as rich tasting but still very good tea taste that's goes well with the milk and cream they use. The milk and cream they use doesn't have that artificial powder taste bubble teas usually have from other shops. That's why I think the line is justified, cause the quality makes up for it and because the staff and size of the store just makes for long lines.

What's not justified and a complete insult is when employees let people blatantly cut the line. After waiting in the heat for practically an hour, a gentleman came up to the line employee and asked if he can cut the line, claiming he had knee problems and in his exact words "I don't want to wait that long". Did the employee turn him down? NO! In fact he let him through. One lady tried to give the gentleman the opportunity to buy a drink off of her but he refused and said he wanted to order. By the way, he waited around 7 minutes to order and his knees seemed pretty fine to me. The icing on top was when his very able bodied wife popped up and told him what she wanted to drink.

Absolutely unfair to the customers who patiently waited. I have sympathy for people with medical issues. But come on, this is a bubble tea line, not a line for emergency medical services. The guy didn't even have a cane or walker and his wife seemed perfectly capable of standing in line like everyone else. Yet, the employee was willing to disrespect all those customers like that. For that, I'm dropping 3 stars making it 2 stars. You want to skip the line? Make sure you walk with a limp or some medical assistance device and claim you can't wait that long cause it'll hurt your legs. They'll wave you right through even though there's 40 something...

Brutally honest review + opinion: The drink itself: pretty good. They are missing out on a huge collab with messaging app LINE (might as well monetize that pun amirite!?) It's a good thing they opened near the summer, so the forced ice policy won't be a big deal. I do wonder how that policy will work out when winter comes around.

Opinion: the novelty factor relied on using 2 different types of bubbles, the bubbles being fresh, the horizon vanilla milk (extremely smart move, Asians love buying packs of these at costco for some reason, so logically if this milk was used in place of powder, cha ching) and the brown sugar that gave it that caramel-ish taste.

Gotta give props to the owner for jumping on that market, since most of the competition nearby either make theirs with powder (tea bar) or premixed (coco). But, this also shows how lots of people are just not aware of other shops a few more blocks away, that also use fresh milk and boba, actual fruit chunks, etc.

Maybe the staff still need more training/practice before the lines will improve, or maybe it is due to waiting for new batches of boba like the owner mentioned in one of the replies. Now that I think about it, they probably needed wait for more water to freeze into ice, or buy ice packs somewhere, from all the ice they add into every drink lol. Anyways, what matters is that whoever managed the marketing/PR campaign for this store, should be given total control, since that was the single most successful/effective part about this store. I hope the line get longer though, just to see how many hours people are willing to exchange for fresh bubbletea. People have started to line up like an hour before the store opening time, reminiscent of those apple product releases back in the days. Fingers crossed for scalpers that camp out the night before, and buy like 100...

The hype for this place is very real!! Yes, the line is tremendously long... so I do suggest maybe waiting until the hype goes down after a month or so because I don't think waiting for more than one hour is really worth it unless you really have nothing else better to do, but this place is very very good! I've only tried their classic brown sugar with cream mousse both with just the boba version and one with a combo of boba and pearl version. Ok so clear up the confusion, BOBA is the larger one - the one you typically see in your bubble teas. PEARL's are the smaller version of it. I was very confused at first when I saw the menu. I personally like the boba better. It's a lot more chewy. The drink itself is sweet just to my liking and is very creamy from the organic milk they use and the mousse. I've tasted Yi Fang's (which I think tastes horrible btw), Moge Tee (which I thought is decent especially the milk tea version), and many others but this one is by far the best. Come check it out when you have time or go during opening times!

To the manager though: I do suggest you to have a better system to keep the line moving as quick as possible. It's sorta ridiculous to be waiting so long to put a bubble tea together because lots of these things should be prepared beforehand... I know there's high volume though, but there's got to be a better system than having people waiting for that long...