Hay Tea — Restaurant in San Leandro

TLDR; This place has a lot of drink options, and small fried food bites as a bonus. The quality of the tea is very good, but their best drinks on the menu are the fruit teas. Giving a 4 star rating because you can't really customize your drink's sweetness, despite it saying that's an option on the menu, and there's no non-dairy milk tea options.

My top recommendations:

Strawberry Lover Green Tea fruit tea with Crystal Boba and a side of Salt & Pepper Tofu.

None of the tea tastes cheap or overly sweetened, despite wishing I had the option for no sweetness. The only drinks that customize sweetness are the "Classic Milk Tea" and the "Boba Milk Tea". There aren't options for non-dairy milk, which would be my preference anywhere else. I highly recommend the cheese sticks, they were super delicious!

This place opened up right before the shelter in place orders were in effect. Since then, they've been open and all the staff wear masks and gloves. The staff will sit in the dining space to eat on their lunch break, but the dining room is closed for now. I've seen them clean the chairs and table tops after...

It was ok. The store was clean but the wait was long. The experience in store was not worth it.

The workers were socializing a lot and took their time with making the drinks. Even though we were the only two people in the store waiting for our drinks. We had to wait about 15 minutes just to get it. There were 3 people working in the front and one cook in the back (we knew because we saw the cook come out to the front). There was a lot of chit chatting in the front while making the drinks. Someone would chat, pause the process of making of the drinks, the do a small task, then chat again. It felt like it took forever just to get our drinks.

Then once we got our drinks. Mine was too sour. So it wasn't enjoyable. Also the cashier that was helping us didn't upsell or ask if we wanted any extra bobba or anything like this. We were just the next person.

I'll probably go back and try their food menu as they have a lot of good looking foods. I hope the...

UPDATE: (Nov 19, 2024)

I wish they had kept the ingredients 2 years ago. I noticed some changes. Their brown sugar milk tea is too sweet, no matter the level of sweetness you asked. Also, the boba was not warm and fresh anymore. It loses its quality. They usually store it in a kettle to make it warm and fresh, but not anymore.

I recently moved from Asia to the USA. One thing I missed in Asia is their Boba milk tea. I tried different Boba milk teas in the USA, and only hay tea had surpassed my taste buds. So, I bought dirty Boba milk tea daily in the Bay Area, CA. Now, I moved to Dallas, TX. I wish they had a branch here in...