Mission

Prepare undergraduates for career success by providing them an opportunity to gain management experience, test their business ideas, and develop as a professional beyond their academics. Oh, and we make great boba tea. 

Founders Note

We want to take this space to congratulate the incredibly hardworking and dedicated employees of East-West Tea. They took on the task of doubling the size of a business only half a year old, without direct oversight of its founders, while also pursuing their own desires. And they did an outstanding job! We successfully turned over operational leadership to the student managers, beat our semester sales goal, opened up retail halfway through the semester, secured a selling location in Brochstein Pavilion for the foreseeable future, and began selling consistently through the Rice serveries. This is a testament not only to their inherent business skills, intelligence, and hard work, but to this business acting as an outlet for their entrepreneurial spirit and ideas. We hope East-West Tea will continue to be a place moving forward where they can innovate and learn and develop as a professional. 

History

East-West Tea was founded in January, 2016 by Rice University students Drew Sutherland, David Cooper, and Glenn Baginski. They observed the incredibly long lines boba tea created at late night food outlets on campus and the inability of those outlets to supply the demand for the drinks. They committed themselves to solving the logistical and supply problems generated by a product with high on-campus demand, but only off-campus suppliers. The solution: produce boba tea at the source of its demand.

Although starting with only a simple marketing assignment for one of Drew’s business classes, the project quickly grew into a full-fledged effort to turn the idea into reality when the founders decided to join forces. The four like-minded entrepreneurs were brought together by their shared belief in the boba tea shop’s potential success. They spent a year painstakingly developing each flavor and recipe, securing a location on campus, and compiling the capital to open the doors of the business.

East-West Tea is operated every day by college students, both managers and cooks. The business acts as their entrepreneurial lab, an opportunity to actually run a business, gain invaluable leadership and management experience, alongside their coursework. As much control as possible is given to the student managers, encouraging them to dream up, execute, and learn from the ideas they believe will benefit the business.

With a firm foundation of excellent sales and reception at Rice, East-West Tea’s future has never been more exciting. The possibilities for expansion are truly limitless. No matter what, the students who make the business run successfully each day will continue to innovate and make superb drinks for their peers and the city of Houston. They are the reason East-West Tea is able to carry out its mission every day: prepare undergraduates for career success by providing them an opportunity to gain management experience, test their business ideas, and develop as a professional beyond their academics. And of course, make great boba tea.