heytea (South Lake Union) — Restaurant in Seattle

Heard this place was good so I had to try it.

Came here at 2-230ish. They had a short line but were pretty busy, wait time was about 20-30mins. When it was my turn I asked for the mulberry strawberry boom They were out of strawberry, so I went with the mango cloud. My friend ordered the coconut mango boom. They were out of the coconut jelly 😑. (How are you out of stuff on a Wednesday in the middle of the day) Anyways - They said they can still make the coconut mango boom, so my friend said okay. He asked for boba, but the thing is since they were out of the coconut jelly that comes with his drink, they should've gave the boba for free to substitute it. But they still charged us for the boba.

Also when ordering the guy that took our order had a mobile ordering system in his hand and one on the table. It was weird cause my friend ordered first but the frontend guy asked if he could take my order first. Why did it matter? I'm not sure.

When our drinks were done, no one called out our number or anything. I had to check the screen in the corner. Also the order status screen was placed in a weird area. They should have put it in the seated area. If you want to check you drink status you gotta get up and move through the line to view it. I had to do it 2x as again no one called out order numbers. This happened to the customers that went before us too.

Drinks were okay. We both got mango drinks and I think there are places that have better mango favored boba tea. Boba was good, tho. Would I come back. Maybe but probably the...

All hype. The pickup situation is absolute chaos so your drink is out for a while after it's done, and also you have to free-for-all shove through the line to get someone's attention to search for your drink.

I had high hopes and might try this again, but this place was super disorganized, and I do NOT recommend the Yumberry Boom.

First for organization: If you want to order in-person, there's a single menu at the register so you can't pick what you want ahead of time while you're waiting. The people ahead of us literally took 5 minutes to decide their drink and no one behind them could see the menu.

When your number is called or comes off the board, you have to shoulder your way through the line to interrupt whoever is at the counter to look at your ticket and find your drink. There's no organized line so people shove in front of you all the time. It seemed like there was only one poor guy who understood how to give drinks to customers, and everyone else just pretended to look at the receipts in total confusion and then walked away. It's not that hard! The number is on the receipt, and the drink has a matching number.

And then the Yumberry Boom tasted like slightly old, soggy blueberries at the bottom of a vaguely fruity tea - I couldn't taste the jasmine, just the slightly off fruit. TERRIBLE drink, was not worth $9...it did look pretty though.

I'll give the milk tea or matcha a try but if that's not good then I'm done with this place. Not a good...

There were six or seven people in the kitchen, and none of them seemed to know what they were doing — it was total chaos. Four or five of them were standing around the order counter chatting with customers, completely ignoring the pickup area where four or five people were already waiting.

When I placed my order, the app said it would be ready in 10 minutes. I only ordered three drinks, but when I came back 20 minutes later, they first told me Drink A was sold out and asked me to change it on the spot. Then they said the matcha for Drink B wasn’t ready yet and I’d need to wait another ten minutes.

Fine — I waited another fifteen minutes and came back, and the same cashier told me, “Sorry, the matcha is also unavailable now. Do you want a refund?” By that time, I had already been waiting for nearly 50 minutes.

I was honestly speechless… Then, two minutes later, another staff member came over and said, “The matcha is ready now, do you still want a refund???” I’ve truly never seen such disorganized management.

An order that the app said would be ready in 10 minutes ended up taking 50 minutes. Not a single apology from anyone — after all that waiting, the only thing they asked was, “Do you want a refund?” Is that really what they call...