Editor’s note: This story was produced for the independent Mosaic Journalism Program for Bay Area high school students, an intensive course in journalism. Students in the program report and photograph stories under the guidance of professional journalists.
Every afternoon, Long Nguyen opens up his East San Jose boba tea shop, T-Lovers Cafe. Teenagers from James Lick High School across the street come in droves to get their boba fix.
One day as he started sweeping up to close the shop, he talked about what summer will mean for his shop — when most of his customers will be on break.
“It’s a big difference,” Nguyen said. “To make up for that, we’re marketing something different this year.”
After renovations and changes to the cafe’s menu this summer, East San Jose tea shop owner Long Nguyen hopes he will be able to share more traditional food with a bigger community. (Karissa Garza/Mosaic)
Nguyen and his wife, Trang, opened their boba shop in November. Three months earlier, two students from James Lick were stabbed by rival gang members. The incident happened on campus during school hours.
Despite East San Jose being one of the poorer neighborhoods of the Bay Area, Nguyen was still not deterred when opening up the boba cafe across the street from a former crime scene.
Nguyen’s story is much like that of Magic Johnson, the former basketball player turned businessman. In 1998, Johnson convinced Starbucks Corporation to partner up with Magic Johnson Enterprises and start new Starbucks Coffee locations in underserved communities.
Johnson was passionate about bringing Starbucks, which was previously only known as “bougie” coffee, to the poorer areas of South Central Los Angeles.
Long Nguyen is passionate about sharing traditional boba tea and other snacks through his cafe, East San Jose’s T-Lovers Cafe. (Areha Shah/Mosaic)
Nguyen wanted something similar — traditional boba tea drinks for the predominantly working-class and Latino Alum Rock area. As a local, Nguyen decided to commit to bringing traditional Vietnamese food to the neighborhood.
Until his shop arrived, he said, the Alum Rock village area had no Vietnamese restaurants. “We figured that one around here would be good,” Nguyen said.
Boba tea is a cold-served drink originating in Taiwan. Boba refers to the jelly pearls made from tapioca starch and simmered in a sugar syrup. They are then added to milk tea to complete the drink.
Nguyen immigrated from Vietnam in 1979, when he was 4 years old. His dad, a software engineer, pushed him to go to college. There, Nguyen realized that he would love to start his own business.
“If you work for somebody, they can fire you, they can lay you off,” Nguyen said. “But if you have your own business, then you can set your hours. You have options — more options — when you run your own business versus working for someone.”
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After receiving his bachelor’s degree in business and information systems from San Jose State University in 1997, Nguyen started his company, Bay Area Manufacturing, which specializes in making semiconductors using high technology. Last year, he decided to open up T-Lovers as a small, side investment.
“We wanted to invest in something different. This is not something we’ve done before,” Nguyen said. The boba shop location was on the market, so he and his wife bought it.
For Nguyen and his wife, who works for Santa Clara County, entering the food industry proved to be a challenge. With careers completely unrelated to food, opening up a cafe meant the Nguyens needed to understand more than just the business portion.
“It was a big learning curve for us because we’ve never been in this industry.” Nguyen said. “We had to learn food safety and health and running almost a restaurant.”
The cafe’s initial success was mainly due to the number of high schoolers across the street and the recent boom of boba tea across the country. However, he hasn’t given up this summer even with the drop in student customers.
The Nguyens have partnered with another company to redo the kitchen and will close for renovations until the start of fall. With restaurant space, their shop can feature a full menu of food along with their previous snacks and boba drinks.
“We’re going to rebrand,” Nguyen said. “We’re going to get into a full restaurant with food, so we can get both crowds of kids with the snacks and drinks, and a full restaurant for adults.”
Nguyen hopes that T-Lovers will prove profitable so he can continue to share traditional Vietnamese food with boba drinks in East San Jose.
Areha Shah is a member of the class of 2027 at Santa Clara High School. Karissa Garza is a member of the class of 2027 at James Lick High School in San Jose.