San Francisco Bubble Tea Shops In Trouble From Plastic Straw Ban

San Francisco recently joined cities such as Vancouver, Miami Beach, Malibu, and Seattle in banning plastic straws. While a decisive victory for the environment, there's one area of San Francisco that looks to be in trouble: bubble tea shops.

Drinking a soda or a cocktail without the use of plastic straw is no problem, but bubble tea is a whole other ball game. The tapioca pearls present in bubble tea that make it "bubbly" can currently only be sucked up with a wide plastic straw. Biodegradable straws have come a long way in the last few years but one has yet to be invented that can handle the large bubbles present in bubble tea.

Set to take effect in July of next year, bubble tea shop owners are currently in a scramble to find an alternative to plastic straws. Many bubble tea shops are immigrant-owned and will be facing a serious crisis one year from now when they will have to have an alternative to plastic straws in place.

In addition to straws, the ban will also cover stir sticks, toothpicks, and other unnecessary plastics. Coffee shops like Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts will likely be able to adapt to these new circumstances without much fuss, but bubble tea shops are quite literally facing impending closure.

Coming to the Bay Area in the mid-1990s from Taiwan, bubble tea has become extremely popular in San Francisco and become a staple of many areas of the city. There are currently almost 90 shops in the city dedicated to a purely bubble tea menu and several hundred more that offer bubble tea on their menu in some capacity.

Until the ban takes effect in July 2019, bubble tea shop owners await the invention of a biodegradable straw that can successfully allow tapioca pearls to successfully pass through them.