Today we’d like to introduce you to Phyllis and Tommy Ly.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
We had a weekly routine, where every Friday we’d grab lunch then head over to the nearest Bambu to eat, have dessert & play cards with our co-workers. Each time we’d go to Bambu, the drinks were addictively delicious. Tommy (the entrepreneur) found out that Bambu was a “hands off” franchise with a lot of room for the owners to design & run the store how they wanted. We had always talked about opening some sort of store where people could come together to play board games, watch anime & talk about geeky things while enjoying really good boba drinks. This was our chance and we jumped on it. After almost a year of planning and another year of construction, we finally opened our doors May 2017. We are the only boba drink/dessert shop in the Houston/Katy area that is fully immersed in geek & anime culture.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We’ve definitely had our challenges! With this being our first business ever, we had to learn a lot of things on our own. For example when building from the ground up, it was easy to overlook small details that would impact us later like where outlets should be installed, how having high ceilings looks cool but makes it echo and how it may be a little loud being next to a gym during their classes. We even had several equipment failures early on, some negative feedback comparing us to “the original” Bambu location and disputes about using the Bambu logo for our main exterior sign.
We’re still learning and growing together, as a team. We stay motivated because we have so much support from our friends, family & wonderful employees to remind us that we put everything we had into this venture and we can overcome anything. We continue to listen to our customers, make adjustments to suit their specific needs for the Katy area, network with local schools/business and post both eye catching and engaging photos on social media to build our presence.
Please tell us about Bambu Desserts & Drinks.
Bambu Desserts & Drinks serves fresh, healthy and colorful Asian-inspired Chè, unique milk teas, Vietnamese coffees, and real fruit smoothies. The menu now has nearly 100 available combinations of desserts and drinks to select from. Our desserts are vegan-friendly, dairy free and gluten free. We cook our ingredients in-house such as the beans, jellos, & coconut milk. We even hand crack coconuts to ensure fresh juice & meat.
Our specific Bambu Katy location specializes in catering to the geek community where we also have live streaming anime all day, an arcade station (games change from time to time), complimentary board games & comics for our customers to enjoy, and tons of geeky merchandise to buy that you would normally only find at comic-cons through our partners. We also host events such as board game nights, card game nights & eventually others.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Phyllis – My favorite memories would be how every weekend we’d get all the aunts, uncles & cousins together to go out for dim sum, boba tea, then hang out at one of our houses to play games for the rest of the day. We have a big family and it was a tradition for us to all spend a Saturday or Sunday together. It helped to create strong bonds between all the cousins so that even though we’re now grown up, live in different cities, we still try our best to stay in touch, meet up during the holidays and stay in each other’s lives.
Tommy – My favorite memories from childhood were the years after we first migrated to America and we had my family and extended family all living in one house together. During holidays it was easy to get everyone together and spend quality time together. Christmas morning was the most memorable as we all gathered around the tree and I opened presents (I was the only child in the house at the time). We had many momentous Christmases together and even today we try to keep the tradition alive.
Contact Info:
- Address: 9555 Spring Green Blvd.
Suite E Katy, TX 77494 - Phone: (832) 559-0588
- Email: katy@drinkbambu.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/BambuKaty
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/BambuKaty
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/BambuKaty
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/bambu-katy?osq=bambu
- Other: http://www.fivestars.com/business/TX/Katy/Coffee-Tea/Bambu-Katy-TX/5e29e5e5fddb45dea14c575df5860da8/
Getting in touch: VoyageHouston is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
