As finals approach, all students deserve to know the best spots to grab a tall cup of boba tea. Whether students are treating boba runs as a sweet study break, a post-exam reward or the necessary caffeine kick to keep you going throughout the day, we tried five major boba spots around campus so that you don’t have to.
HeyTea
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Drinks Ordered:
Supreme Brown Sugar Bobo Milk Tea
- Modifications: regular ice, suggested sweetness
Coconut Mango Boom
- Modifications: suggested sweetness, add brown sugar bobo pearls
HeyTea is a Chinese boba chain that made its first appearance in the U.S. in 2023, and opened on South Figueroa Street on May 8 of this year. Known for its creative takes on traditional teas, HeyTea consistently launches new drinks that generate massive lines out the door. From the doodle-like branding to the white minimalistic interior decoration, HeyTea offers a down-to-earth, aesthetically pleasing setting. The USC storefront in particular is rather small and only offers a few places to sit, positioning their drinks as a grab-and-go treat for students.
HeyTea is hands down the best boba spot near campus. The brown sugar bobo milk tea does not compare to any others on this list — the milk tea is creamy and the boba pearls are large and sweet. The coconut mango boom is perfect for a hot day, offering a fruity, slushy-like treat that tastes extremely fresh. Adding boba pearls to this drink completes it — when taking a sip, the combination of mango, coconut and brown sugar keeps you wanting another sip, often leaving us with a finished drink before we make it home.
Yoboseyo
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Drinks ordered:
House Milk Tea
- Modifications: no sweetness modification offered, regular ice, oat milk, add bobo pearls
Iced Blueberry Matcha Latte
- Modifications: no sweetness modification offered, regular ice, add bobo pearls
Located at the heart of the USC Village, Yoboseyo Superette is an independent boba shop with only one other location in Little Tokyo. The shop offers both drinks and a small selection of trinkets, snacks and bottled beverages. The seating area is rather small, but their spaces tend to remain empty throughout the day as students treat it as a grab-and-go boba spot.
Unlike other spots further down on this list, Yoboseyo’s boba pearls are sweet, smooth and the perfect size. The regular sweetness option for the milk tea and the matcha are both on the sweeter side, making their drinks perfect for a mid-study session sweet treat. The sweetness does not overshadow the strong taste of tea in the drinks, and the amount of boba is perfect for getting a couple of pearls in each sip.
Pot of Cha
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Drinks Ordered:
Full Roast Oolong Milk Tea
- Modifications: soy milk, regular ice, suggested sweetness, add boba pearls
Jasmine Green Tea
- Modifications: regular ice, suggested sweetness, add boba pearls
Located right near University Gateway on Figueroa Street, Pot of Cha is an independent boba tea shop that has been a go-to spot for USC students since its opening in 2018. Pot of Cha definitely offers the best seating options out of all of the other places on our list, making it a viable study spot. We appreciated the festive Halloween decorations across the store, but the overall atmosphere felt rather plain.
The boba pearls themselves are sweet and chewy, but the drinks are subpar. We felt that the milk tea and the green tea felt watered down and lacked a strong tea flavor. Their drinks are good, but they didn’t blow us away — and there are other closer spots we’d rather visit than make the trek down Fig in the heat.
It’s Boba Time
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Drinks Ordered:
Brown Sugar Milk Tea
- Modifications: regular size, with boba, 100% sweet (reccommended), soy milk, regular ice
Taro Milk Tea
- Modifications: regular size, with boba, 100% sweet (reccommended), regular ice
It’s Boba Time is a boba franchise that offers more than 140 drink options according to their website. The USC location is nestled on Vermont Avenue in a strip mall right across the street from the Downey Way entrance. It became clear to us that this is a popular late-night boba spot, as customers were still consistently coming in around 11 p.m. Their interior offers minimal bar-level stool seating, making us feel like the shop is more of a grab-and-go than a sit-down environment. If you’re an indecisive person, consider grabbing boba somewhere else — you’ll be scrolling through the self-order kiosk for hours trying to decide on a drink.
The size and texture of the pearls are vital to a good cup of boba tea, and unfortunately, we felt that It’s Boba Time’s boba pearls were too small and had a grainy texture. The drinks themselves were pretty tasty, but the taro milk tea lacked a strong tea flavor. The regular-size cups were small in comparison to other boba shops, but upgrading to the 21 oz cup raises the base price by $1.
Amino Avenue
Rating: ⭐️
Drinks ordered:
Thai Milk Tea w/ Boba
- Modifications: 100% sweetness, regular ice
Jasmine Milk Tea w/ Boba
- Modifications: 75% sweetness, regular ice
Last and unfortunately least on our list is Amino Avenue. Located on Figueroa Street right underneath West 27th Place lies this cozy boba spot that markets its drinks as low-sugar and low-calorie. Amino Avenue’s atmosphere is adequate — while a small storefront with minimal seating, there was something charming about the all-black interior and wall covered in photobooth photos.
We came to the consensus that Amino Avenue was the worst boba spot we tried on this list. When drinking the Thai milk tea, the boba came up in clumps, clogging the straw and blocking us from taking proper sips. When we were able to get a proper sip, the Thai milk tea tasted like watered-down sweetener with a whisper of Thai tea. The jasmine milk tea was a disgrace to jasmine tea fanatics like ourselves — it was extremely bitter even after ordering a whopping 75% sweetness, and the taste of jasmine was also watered down and barely tasted.
Conclusion
If you’re knee-deep in midterm studying or finals prep and need a sweet break, stop by the boba shops at the top of this list and skip the rest. While we’re both major HeyTea fanatics, you can never go wrong with Yoboseyo or even Pot of Cha — but give them all a try anyways and form your own opinion.
Edited by Sammie Yen, Camille Culbertson and Andriana Yatsyshyn.