Spilling The Tea with Yoko and Jan by Aylin Sanchez Entrepreneurship is developing, organizing, and running a new business to generate profit, and sometimes, that means taking financial risks. You have to start at the bottom and build your way up. Many of these entrepreneurs work in New York City, encouraging social change and improving the way people live and work. They create more sustainable, less expensive products, and functional jobs, and encourage new ideas for products and and services to the market. Jan and Yoko are among some of these entrepreneurs who contribute to the diversity of the city by incorporating and sharing their cultural heritage in their business. You can see the Malaysian and Chinese influences in their tea shope, Her Boba, located on 457 W. 50th Street. “We felt that many of today’s boba shops did not sell authentic bubble teas,” they explained, so they launched a menu selling classics like Mango Green Tea and Classic Bubble Milk Tea, plus the beloved and popular Her Boba Signature Matcha Teas like Matcha Jasmine, Matcha Lavender, and Matcha Ube. They hope to expand Her Boba and stay true to their mission of using all naturally sourced ingredients and keeping the teas as authentic as possible. There were many significant steps along the way, such as branding, finding a location, and decorating, all while cutting costs at every step. The first steps in branding are naming your business and picking a logo. According to Yoko, when picking a logo and name, you want something simple, “so that you can see it from afar, and recognize it, something that isn’t so complicated you can’t remember it.” Another big step is finding a location, a daunting task, especially in New York, with ever increasing inflation. Before finding her location, Yoko checked out a few places, but ultimately decided on the little spot on W. 50th because the rent was affordable. Another reason was that it was close to a school, which had the potential to bring in a lot of profit. When it came to decorating, Yoko decided to do everything herself. She uses the “aesthetic of simplicity” to her advances, and upcycles many things to decorate, as well as keeping the menu simple, and “prioritizing quality over quantity,” which allows customers to really enjoy their products. “Something big isn’t necessarily needed, as long as it gives you the push you need to start,” Yoko and Jan say, as it relates to finding money and setting up shop. They’ve been known to cut costs by rescuing items from Facebook Marketplace, cleaning them up, and giving them a new touch. Thrift like this helps out the shop financially. “Use what you have,” she advises, recommending that folks try not to overachieve so much that you end up bringing down your business instead of helping it to flourish. Don’t exhaust all the resources you have at your disposal, and don’t try to be like everybody else. The more authentic you are, and your product is, the more homey it will feel.
82
