At Milky Way Tea House, Downey finally gets its boba fix
Manny Medina, owner of Milky Way Tea House. Photos by Alex Dominguez
DOWNEY -- With summer on the way, who wouldn’t like a unique, cool tasty drink to combat the heat?
Tucked within the Downey Gateway is Milky Way Tea House, a small, family-owned and operated business known for their boba teas and floats.
Manny Medina, 29, was always a neighbor to Downey before moving into the city around three years ago. But to get his boba fix, he found himself driving out of city limits.
“We kind of wanted to bring something different to Downey,” said Medina. “I would have to go out of Downey to get some boba. I would have to go to Pasadena, Cerritos. I figured Downey was missing something like that.”
Medina owns the shop, with his wife, sister and cousin helping him run it. Medina’s kids can also be found playing behind the counter on occasion.
“Family, straight family,” said Medina.
The teahouse has served customers for around a year and some change, offering various flavors of mixed green teas, black teas and slushes.
“For me so far it’s been an interesting path that I’ve taken,” says Medina. “As it is I come from a family-oriented background, so I kind of knew what I was going in for…the good thing is you’re working for yourself, you’re doing something for your community, and you get to meet people every day. Just to see them, that they’re satisfied with your product, that’s a big plus.”
Medina and his family use various mixes of teas and syrups to concoct each drink. They cook their boba fresh every day, marinating it in honey water to give it it’s nice texture and sweet taste.
Medina says it’s all about experimenting.
“Pretty much it’s just taking the flavors and figuring out if they go with each other or not. Before we serve it to the people, we start mixing with the flavors,” said Medina. “If it’s a hit then we just go on with it.”
Some of the more popular drinks include the green tea-based “Orbit Sun” and “Constellation,” as well as the more milky, black tea based “Asteroid,” “Super Nova,” and “Martian.”
However, what Milky Way is really known for is its “boba floats.”
“They’re pretty much milk teas and they carry cookies and cream ice cream on them, then on top of the ice cream we have some toppings, which is cereal and stuff like that,” said Medina.
Medina says he came up with the idea in an effort to offer something different. He and his family knew they were on to something when the drink was a hit at a preview tasting event they held before opening.
“If soda can have ice cream, why can’t teas have ice cream,” said Medina. “Now-a-days, there’s a whole trend going now with sandwiches with ice cream, churros with ice cream, all these crazy things. [The boba floats are] something out of the box we wanted to do…we had a tasting party before we opened. It was family and friends. A lot of them are tea lovers and when they seen the whole boba float thing they were like ‘what that’s insane, that’s crazy.’
When they tasted it they were like, ‘Oh my God, it’s over, that’s it! This is good.’ That’s when we knew it was pretty good.”
So far, the tea house has drawn a younger crowd. Medina says he wants to get everyone involved.
“Not just the youngsters, since it’s a family-owned business, we want to make it family oriented,” said Medina. “We want the kids to come, the dad to come, the grandpa, the uncle, we want everybody to come. That’s what we’re shooting for.”
Milky Was has already garnered a moderate loyal following of customers as well.
“So far, thank God, we have a couple of loyal customers that come in once a week, sometimes twice a week,” said Medina. “The effect of that is they bring their family members, they bring their friends. What kind of satisfies me more too is you get people from different areas that come in just for the drink…they’re actually taking a drive to your spot to get your product. That tells me that we’re doing something good.”
Medina says the goal is to continue to grow and expand over time, eventually adding locations in different areas.
“Definitely we want to grow,” said Medina. “I know it’s going to take time…that’s pretty much one of our goals right now.”
Milky way Tea House is located at 8270 Firestone Blvd.