The Camellia Road

Then

In the 2010’s, making boba milk tea with real dairy milk and opting out of powders and high fructose corn syrup was a big deal. We started Camellia Rd Tea Bar with a simple mission - to do boba tea that used better ingredients and better technique. We weren’t looking to create or follow any movement - we really didn't even know anything about business or marketing. Darwin and I were just two STEM nerds who obsessed over building a better boba.

This fact is illustrated by this periodic-table-like chart that we had this posted up in-store for a while. It represents all the teas we would use on our menu:

Camellia Rd's menu is essentially two options: a milk tea and a fruit tea. But we obsessed over the details. In true engineer fashion, Darwin looked at everything in terms of product "specs".

Our drinks are in a 20 fl oz cup, with a small scoop of ice. The milk teas are made to order with a strong tea base, organic cane sugar, and choice of milk. The tea frescas are made with real fruit, and prepared in big barrels as a tribute to the agua frescas we’d find at our local taco spots.* Our very first blog post was about why we use real milk instead of creamer.

And in 2017, this made a difference in San Diego's boba tea scene. People tried us and told others. A boba tea shop that actually emphasized tea. A spot that wasn't overly sweet, and used real fruit.

Then, we started to have Camellia Rd regulars. There were people who I knew by order, and many I knew by name. It was good customer service and hospitality, but I didn’t think about it that way. It was just part of how we treated people.

And then we started to have Camellia Rd fans. There were people who told everyone in their social network about us. There were people who would make us part of their weekend drive from OC or LA. There were even people who, when they moved out of town, felt the need to come by and get boba one last time and say bye.

Over the years we've tried our best but had our shares of struggles. I’ve had great menu ideas; I’ve had terrible ones. I’ve mentored team members and provided spaces for them; and I’ve had to let some people go. I’ve made people feel welcome and cared for; I’ve also forgotten peoples’ names and lost my patience. I’ve left Camellia; I’ve come back to Camellia. I’ve closed the store, reopened the store, expanded hours, closed hours, added drink items, removed drink items, sold egg tarts, done festivals and night markets, done catering and so much more.

Now

In 2025, using high quality ingredients for boba tea isn’t a major differentiator any more. We're still one little boba tea shop, and San Diego’s boba tea and cafe scene has ramped up considerably. (In the Convoy District area alone there are 15+ boba shops.) And as San Diego continues to grow, we will undoubtedly get more international chains and concepts coming in to the market.

My goal is that Camellia Rd Tea Bar can return to setting a standard for San Diegos’ boba tea scene. To continue to experiment, to educate people about tea, to provide great experiences, and to maybe even one day expand or do new concept stores.

But the reality is, we’re not able to continue on at our current pricing. 

I spent a couple of years away from Camellia Rd as a PM. In project management, there’s a model called the project management triangle used to describe how 3 primary constraints relate to quality. These constraints are scope, time, and cost. Generally speaking, to sacrifice any one of these constraints would require compensation from the two other constraints, or risk sacrificing the integrity of the triangle and lower quality.

Or, as a general contractor put it simply, “You can have it good, fast or cheap. Choose two.”

A quality triangle for the food industry could be described as:

• Scope: variety of menu, services, and amenities
• Time: effort in service and complexity of recipes
• Cost: price

Elaborated further:

Scope

Scope represents the menu variety and options on a given menu and the amenities or services offered. Each menu choice has multiple ingredients or components. A Jasmine Green Milk Tea will have jasmine green tea, sugar, and multiple options. Camellia Rd tries to control for scope by having limited tea base options, but offering seasonal drinks that we rotate in over time.

However, as stated earlier we want to continue sourcing new teas and developing new drinks and new toppings. This takes time, energy, and resources (our Taro Milk Tea special is version 7.0 of many different iterations).

Additionally, scope can include amenities: major chains like Starbucks set industry standards that we adopted, like having free wifi, a public restroom, and mixed seating spaces - all of which have additional costs associated with it.

Time

Time represents the effort made by the team. It’s the level of service and experience when you have a question you need answered or you have a drink you don’t like (that we’d be happy to replace).

There’s also the amount of time that goes into preparing recipes. It’s part of Camellia Rd’s mission to forgo artificial powders and syrups as much as possible - but making things from scratch takes a lot of time and energy.

For example, to prepare our taro milk tea instead of using powdered flavoring we take actual taro root and cook it down. We peel, rinse, cut, cook, blend, and cool taro in a process that takes a few hours of prep time.

Cost

Cost represents the menu price. Over the years we’ve had customers comment on both sides of how expensive we were and how inexpensive we were.

As I’ve shared before, Darwin and I have STEM degrees and our analytical brains would go into overdrive. Internally, we rationalized our product specs:

• we had a 20 fl oz drink (Starbucks’ iced “grande” size is 16 fl oz)
• we used less ice then an average shop**
• we genuinely used higher quality tea and ingredients then other places
  
• we make a lot of our things from scratch (organic cane sugar syrup and real fruit purees)

We never wanted to sacrifice quality of product, quality of service, or quality of experience for our team (we’re not perfect but we try our best). But the quality triangle necessitates something gives: so instead, Darwin and I absorbed the cost.

We’d work well over 40, 50, 60 hours a week depending on the season we were in. We’d take home well under minimum wage or even zero. I'd spend hours in my free time just looking up recipes and thinking about ideas for Camellia. Now this isn’t new or unique; many mom and pop establishments all over the world do this. It’s part of the deal when you sign up to start a new business, and the grind is especially hard when it’s a food business. But even though part of me is still willing to pay this cost - it can’t realistically go on anymore. At some point one of the constraints has to give. We don't want to sacrifice quality, our go back on our original mission and drive. So we're making the difficult decision to raise our prices.

Starting November 2025 Camellia Rd, will be doing a significant price increase. In part, because of rising costs and inflation. But in larger part, because we’ve been underpriced. We want to continue to offer you more. If you’re reading this and made it this far I want to thank you and acknowledge that you’re exactly who I want Camellia Rd Tea Bar to be for. I'm sorry that we no longer can continue to be a low cost boba shop. Whether you've been a part of this journey since 2017, or you're just hearing about us now: I want to continue to have the same standards for quality tea, drinks, and service but to continue to give you even more. I want to have new specials, new teas, new toppings, an updated space, new hours, programs (loyalty rewards program or custom catering), return of egg tarts and other pastries, special events, to share recipes and tea knowledge, and so much more.

Camellia Rd was not built by business people - it was started by a couple science nerds. We didn’t know how to communicate and showcase our product, and out of fear we kept our price at $5 milk tea base price for 5 years until 2022 when we raised it by $0.35. But we can't keep being underpriced in the market anymore. We want to continue to learn, and grow - and I hope you’ll understand.

If you want to read more about the specific price changes and a discussion rising costs, click here: https://www.camelliard.com/blogs/blog/menu-price-increases-inflation-2025

-Ricky Lau

---

*Darwin thought of the name Tea Frescas after we had gotten tacos at a local stand one night and we thought it was really catchy so it stuck.

**We’ve taken an extra large 32 fl oz drink cup from a major boba tea chain and poured the liquid into one of our 20 fl oz cups by straining out the ice with a hawthorne strainer. Rather comically, the drink liquid fill up exactly to the top of one of our 20 fl oz cup. We never posted this video because we’re not here to put other places down.