A near-death experience can change your life. Sometimes it means making new commitments or new goals. Sometimes it means making tea.
For Allen and Rosseana Kang, owners of the newly opened Taichi Bubble Tea in Kendall Yards, it meant all three.
The Kangs met while attending college at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Rosseana studied aviation supply chain management and later pursued a master's in business administration. Allen studied aeronautics and obtained his pilot's license.
After graduating, the pair bought a small single-engine plane and moved to Seattle. One night while flying from Tacoma to Everett, their plane's engine failed, forcing the couple to make an emergency landing on a street in Bothell.
Despite clipping a power line and crash-landing on the roadway, the couple walked away with only minor injuries. Nevertheless, they decided to take a break from flying — and to get married. That, and a change in job locations for Rosseana, brought the couple in 2022 to Spokane, where Allen's family lives.
Allen's mother, Susan Zheng, owner of Canaan Buffet in North Spokane, is a restaurant industry veteran of over 20 years, and suggested the couple open a bubble tea — also known as boba tea — shop. Owning a business was something the Kangs had always wanted to do, so when the opportunity presented itself, their role as business owners took flight.
"I'm supposed to be a pilot, but I'm making tea!" Allen says.
Taichi's drink menu features fruit teas, milk teas ($5.50/small, $6.50/large), and smoothies ($6.75) in a wide selection of flavors: jasmine, honeydew, chocolate, kumquat, taro, strawberry, and pineapple, to name a few. Customers can also choose toppings such as tapioca pearls, jelly, popping boba and cheesy milk foam.
Taichi's unique options include the milk crush ($6.75), a combination of frozen fruit and milk that creates a creamy fruit drink, and its zang zang ($5.50/small, $6.50/large), a flavored paste on the inside of a cup filled with milk. Flavors include sweet potato, taro, matcha, chocolate and Rosseana's favorite, brown sugar.
"The complaints about a lot of boba places are that one day you might come in and the flavor might be bland, the next time it might be too sweet...[Taichi] is big on getting it right every time," Allen says.
The Kangs' Taichi uses a new express service in the franchise. This means their menu is limited — just drinks, rice boxes and ramen — and guests usually order to-go. But authenticity, consistency and quality are high priorities for the Kangs.
Taichi's ramen ($16) broth is laboriously made from scratch and takes two days to prepare, including eight hours of consistent stirring. Customers can choose from tonkotsu, miso, tomato or shoyu broth and then pick their vegetables and protein, from pork (+$1), shrimp (+$2) or beef (+$2). For rice boxes, choices are unagi ($17), beef ($16), pork ($16) or chicken ($15).
Rosseana notes that she's always happy to offer samples to people who aren't sure what to order.
"They'll try it and they're like 'Oh wow, this reminds me of home,' — typically they're foreign or Korean or Japanese, and they're like 'Wow, this is really good,'" she says.
The Inlander's new neighbor, Taichi Bubble Tea took over the former location of The Tea, also a bubble tea shop, which closed late last year.
Some boba lovers may recognize the Taichi brand, as it's a franchise that initially launched in 2015 in New York. The Kang's location is the first in the Pacific Northwest, and Allen joins his brother and father as Taichi franchise owners.
Most Taichi locations are full-service, unlike the Kang's ultra-compact space. Allen describes the business model as similar to Panera, where guests order and pay first, then sit down and get their meal before busing their own tables. For the coming summer months, the couple plans to add more outdoor seating to complement the few bar-style seats they have inside.
Due to limited space not only for seating but working, the couple had to figure out how to streamline their production and most effectively fit their equipment and supplies.
"We've designed it in a way where, in the daytime, we shouldn't need to reach to the top or go to the storage," Allen says. "We try to make it as efficient as possible."
Within the year, the Kangs hope to open another area location in the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene area, this time in a larger space that offers dine-in service.
Many other full-service Taichi locations around the U.S. have board games for people to play in an effort to "create a comfortable place for the community where people can work and hang out," says Allen, pointing to Taichi's mission and the atmosphere the Kangs hope to cultivate for their business.
"We've put our heart into it," Rosseana says.
And while Allen still hopes to pursue aviation someday, for now, Taichi seems to be taking off. ♦
Taichi Bubble Tea • 1227 W. Summit Pkwy. • Open daily 11 am-8 pm • taichibubbletea.com • 509-278-7998
