FruiTea Bubbles Café — Restaurant in Smyrna

We visited this black owned establishment on Tuesday, July 12, 2022. It is located in the downtown Smyrna area at the Village Pavilion. It is kind of in the cut, but located right next to Buckhead Prep School. There is ample free parking in this area directly near the business. Upon arrival the establishment was clean, modern, and welcoming. They do have some cute and colorful elements to their displays and outside windows. There is a sign that states they have extended hours for the summer along with new stream add ons of brown sugar syrup, white chocolate, caramel, or chocolate. The employees were nice and professional as well. Each drink can be built based on personal preference. You have the choice of a base with different varieties of milk tea, fruit tea & iced tea, or lemonade. The sizes of the beverages are 16 oz, 24 oz, and 32 oz. They also have vegan options and for a small fee you can you can double or triple flavors. Once you choose your base there are a variety of milk tea, fruit tea, and lemonade flavors to choose from. You can also do add ons to tea for a small fee which include popping pearls, boba, and jellies. They also have hot tea, hot chocolate, and hot coffee for sale. I noticed you can also choose to make your tea a slushie if desired and this is even offered in grape flavor. On their menu board they do have suggestions of different flavor combinations which helps customers decide how they want to build their tea. We ordered the almond milk based 32 oz cookies n’ cream tea with brown sugar boba pearls. They have assorted sweet treats for sale at the check out counter also. This includes chocolate covered lollipops, chocolate covered marshmallows, chocolate dipped pretzels, and chocolate covered Oreos. They also have different flavors of macaroons including: chocolate, blueberry, pistachio, lemon, orange, and raspberry. They sell an assorted variety of jumbo cookies including double chocolate macadamia nut, raspberry cheesecake, chocolate chunk, and sugar cookie. In addition there are an assortment of brownies and bars for sale including cheesecake brownie, chocolate chip brownie, lemon bars, and chocolate chip blondies. We purchased raspberry cheesecake cookies, blueberry macaroons, and lemon macaroons. The bubble tea didn’t take long for them to make and was brought out to the counter. The bubble tea was very tasty with a sweetly balanced flavor and the perfect complement of the brown sugar boba pearls. The 32 oz is a nice size drink and it was actually quite filling once we finished. The macaroons were good as well with the perfect texture of not too soft, not too hard. They had a nice filling in the middle for a true macaroon. The raspberry cheesecake cookie was pretty good and reminded me of the fancy version of a soft sugar cookie one would buy at the grocery store. They have nice seating areas inside where you can sit and enjoy your sweet treats and teas. This business also has a 100 health score which is superb. I don’t feel this place has been in this location that long, but it is a nice place to get bubble teas. They also have merchandise for sale including mugs which come with a free hot tea with purchase. The business also sells t-shirts and tumblers as well. I would like to return to purchase other items such as the strawberry or pineapple lemonades/teas with the variety of popping pearls. The employee informed us that the popping pearls have fruit juice in them so it just enhances and complements the flavors of whatever tea you choose. I would recommend the cookies and cream flavor which I sure would be even more enhanced with whole milk or oat milk. There is also a restroom in the business s which appeared to be clean and acceptable to use. I have never seen a black owned boba tea business before and before this have only tried Asian owned boba tea places. The Asian owned tea places have been in various parts of town including Lenox Mall and Doraville of course. I would recommend everyone patronize this business and I also plan to return to try other teas...

This place is so cute. Drinks were tasty. My only complaint is there were hardly any bobas in either of our drinks. I've been to SO many boba tea joints and the standard amount of boba they gave us is 1/3 of what's standard anywhere else. I paid $2 for 2 additional scoops for each of us and it was perfect.

Edit: I visited this location again a few weeks after my initial visit. My boyfriend had never had boba tea and I was excited that this place is close to my job. Who I assume is the owner(?) was at the cash register and was extremely rude. I made the exact same order I had previously but was told I wasn't allowed to have that order. She was extremely passive-aggressive and suggested I not return again. The customer service on my first visit was also not very good, but the cashier was a teenager and since I work in customer service I never take anything very personally from people in these positions, customer service might be the worst job out there. It's a shame because this place had a lot of potential. Probably won't return

Edit take 2: owner responded to my review so I had to give this place another shot. 6/11. Service was better initially, the young woman at the register was new and didn't give us any trouble about adding more bobas to our drinks, but our whole order was wrong. I personally did not customize my order, I just ordered a drink and didn't add or request anything special because i just wanted to have a good experience. The two people I was with ordered the same thing as each other and wanted extra bobas, which cost $1 per scoop. When we told the person who brought out our drinks that it wasn't right, they were kind of rude and sort of threw up their hands and blamed everything on the cashier and didn't fix the order. Again, I want so badly to like this place. It's so conveniently located and the drinks are actually good even when theyre not what you ordered. The customer service is so bad. I work in customer service and actually train all of our new employees. If I had a piece of advice for the owner here, there are online seminars and people you can hire to come in to re-establish the standard of service that can take your business above and...

I assumed I had a bad experience based on the reviews, but when I read the other poor reviews that was my experience exactly. Undercooked, flavorless boba. Mushy jelly. Watered down weak black and green tea. Syrupy sweet fruit teas. The staff was complete disorganized, inputting our order differently than how it appeared (correctly) on our receipt. The cashier initially told me they dont "do" milk tea despite there being an entire section of the menu about it. She was having a lot of trouble on the register and I was patient (she was extremely polite and friendly, just seemed undertrained) but then it became obvious SHE was the one in charge. I get it you are a new business but your staff needs to be trained before you throw them out to the public. That's not fair to them or your customers. I heard her tell another customer "I dont know what matcha is, its the green mud stuff". THIS IS A RED FLAG FOR A TEA PLACE!!!!!!!

They do not ask about sweetness levels, and I could be mistaken but I did not see anything on the menu about it either. I frequent Kung Fu Tea(very good), Sweet Hut(very good), Tiny Bubbles (good), Honey Bubble(ok) and I am very sad to say Fruitea is the worst by far.

My guess is many of the positive reviews do not know what milk tea or boba are supposed to taste like and those that mostly get the fruit teas must like their drinks extremely sweet. I understand the owner says the store will remake drinks but frankly if your staff can't make simple things correct the first time I dont know how you can fix it with that same staff at the time. I don't trust that you are able to train your staff. We ordered Oolong Milk tea with boba (boba AND milk are extra which is also very bizarre to be when the drink is already ~$6) and a Passionfruit with jelly. Both were undrinkable and were discarded. I really wanted to...