UMe ( tea & snack ) — Restaurant in Santa Cruz

Waited 53 minutes for two drinks. They served people ( who got the same exact drink as me ) who got there 15 minutes after my arrival before serving me-- no excuse. Again, 53 MINUTE WAIT WITH NO WARNING. Come here if you want to waste your day. I could have driven to San Jose and ordered boba from there before I got my drink.

When I complained to the server saying, " it's unfair for your customer to not be notified they will potentially be waiting up to an hour for their drink. It's not only unfair to your customers, but also to you the staff who are obviously understaffed " .

30 minutes into my wait a second employee showed up to help their, and was apparently late due to traffic.

After I complained to the staff and asked them to pass it on to the manager, a woman and her kid decided to get a refund ( they initially ordered approximately 10 minutes after I did) , and the refund itself took over 10 minutes.

I cannot stress enough, PLEASE do not come here unless you are comfortable waiting 53 minutes or more in full sun without a chair. I wish I was able to email the manager because this experience was ridiculous.

I arrived at Ume tea at 3:26 pm on 2/22/24, and left at 4:17 pm. -- managers please take note of this and fix this, it's not okay for your customers to pay only to wait almost a n hour with no warning. This problem has obviously been an issue for months now, according to prior yelp reviews, and has not been rectified. Your management team replies to complaints about the long wait time promising to look into it/ to work towards fixing it--- but never do apparently as months later you are still making people wait almost an hour.

I was not the only one who was impacted by this.

People would wait up to 15 minutes just to order, then find out what they wanted was out of supply ( all cream products were out such as matcha etc ). It was like a comedy show, people would walk past and laugh at how many people were...

Not the biggest green tea fan, which is what most of the menu is, so I ordered the Thai tea. I would actually go ahead and say this is the most authentic-tasting Thai tea I've had in Santa Cruz, which isn't saying much but it's saying something.

I also got the Peach Lychee smoothie, which was actually pretty nice too.

My gripe with the drinks' taste is that they both were listed on the menu with toppings that came with it (crème brûlée cream for the Thai tea and salted cheese for the smoothie), which both ended up tasting pretty subpar. I've had better of both toppings at Happy Lemon. Compared to that, Ume's were pretty bland and diluted the drink. I would try and ask to exclude those toppings altogether if I return.

I have an issue with the pricing as well. I know toppings can be hard to get in Santa Cruz seeing as it either needs to be ordered or delivered from the Bay, but paying an additional, whole dollar just for a single topping is too much.

My final issue is that the wait time is a little ridiculous. When I got there, there were 5-6 people waiting for their drinks, but no one was in line to order so I ordered immediately. It took thirty minutes for me to get two drinks, and that's also just too much, especially for a non-busy day.

Overall, if you're desperate for bubble milk or green tea (particularly Thai tea, from what I can say) in Santa Cruz, this is probably the best place to go. I'd regular this place more if they had black/oolong tea options, but for now I'll go to Soul Sweets in Scotts...

This place is the worst!!! Their managers quit on them, they had no strawberry drink at all when half the menu is strawberry. One of the employees asked two customers to move their cars because she wanted their parking spots, of course they couldn’t leave until they got their drink they’ve been waiting a long while for. With a sidewalk full of waiting customers a male worker talks badly about customers from the day before. The employee bringing in food and supplies at 3:00 pm then pulls one of the working employees to help get milk and strawberries from Costco out of the car for her. Female employee begins to yell through the window that these customers have been waiting for 30 minutes and for them hurry up so she can take their parking spot. The male employee yelled back calling the customers liars. The teenage employee are completely unprofessional and rude. All of this was in front of 10 other waiting customers. When we got our drinks we asked for with the plushie surprise. The drink didn’t fit in the surprise cup at all. Worst...