The grand opening was originally scheduled for January 21 but permitting delays pushed that back to February 8, then it was pushed again to the first day of this month with a soft opening the week before. But Pei wishes he had given himself a little more time.
During the soft opening week, the ordering kiosk stopped working, the speakers broke down, and he discovered a leaky gasket in his refrigerated tea dispensers. When we visited him the day before the grand opening, he was fiddling with the cup sealer, which suddenly decided to only partially seal drinks.
But it all came together on opening day as the line stretched out the door from opening until "3:40 p.m., when it finally got inside," Pei recalls. "But even so, people kept coming and we didn't catch up with the line until after 5 p.m. just for it to pick back up twenty minutes later."
Customers were enticed by the offer of a free drink with their order on March 1. Overwhelmed by the volume, Pei went through 26 bags of ice and ran out of most of his flavoring syrups and almost all of his toppings. Most critically, he ran through all seven bottles of fructose, which is used in the majority of items on the menu.
Now, TropiTai is on pause until its resupply orders come in—the current estimated arrival is Sunday, March 9, and the exact reopening date is still up in the air.
"This last weekend has left me feeling pretty excited for the future of TropiTai. However I'm the type of person to not celebrate too early. So honestly, I'm also very worried," Pei says, referring to his adjusted perspective on staffing, payroll, and traffic. "I suppose that's just the next part of my journey and adapting on the fly is the name of the game."
How it started
Three years ago, Pei was enrolled at CU Boulder studying computer science but in 2023, several factors changed the trajectory of Pei’s life. To make some extra cash as a sophomore in college, he took a job at Staples and then roofing and solar sales. “That kind of opened my mind where it was like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to work for someone else. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life going into the office 9 to 5 every day,” he says. “Especially when I go to class and I’m not learning anything useful or, if it is useful, then they’re not teaching it at the pace that I feel like I could be learning it at.”That year, his grandfather passed away, leaving him and his parents an inheritance. That's when his mom, who previously worked at Froyo Zone, told her son that she wanted to open a restaurant. He recalls telling her, “‘Let me help you. Let me do the marketing, let me do the business side, because it’s what I wanted to learn.’” They started scouting for locations and settled on the old Zero Degrees location in Lakewood, signing the lease in September 2023.
But soon, Pei and his mom were disagreeing on everything. “It got to a point where we were butting heads because I feel like it was a generational difference. There was a lot of stuff where it was like, we needed to do this so we could stay on brand, or for marketing purposes. And she just never understood,” he remembers. “It got so bad to the point where it was affecting my mental health. I was doing so much work and wasn’t getting respect or any authority.”
After discussing the future of the business, “Luckily, she was generous enough to let me do it on my own,” Pei says.
Originally, his mother wanted to open a Taiwanese cafe, but Pei decided to pivot to an easier concept to implement —dessert, with a menu inspired by the Taiwanese-Hawaiian fusion that Pei embodied growing up. His father is Hawaiian and his mother is Taiwanese. The logo for TropTai is Taiwan’s national animal, the Formosan black bear, wearing a lei made out of hibiscus (Hawaii’s state flower) and plum blossoms (the Taiwanese national flower).
What's on the menu
The teas are more fruity than those at a typical boba shop, with some novelties like Taiwanese yogurt tea and a passion fruit guava green tea inspired by the popular Hawaiian POG juice. Rather than Hawaiian-style crushed ice, Pei chose to go more Taiwanese-style. Instead of drizzling flavored syrups over ice, he mixes the flavored liquid base and then pours it into the ice shaver for every order, making the ice more creamy and flavorful.So far, bestsellers are the strawberry and mango with condensed milk and boba, but Pei’s personal favorite is winter melon shaved ice. “It was kind of an accident. I was doing a winter melon drink and it was way too sweet, so my friend told me to put it in the machine,” he remembers. “It was good! I refined the recipe a little bit, but the winter melon was my first shaved ice recipe, so it’s my favorite.”
Initially, Pei plans to limit the menu to teas and shaved ice, but eventually, he’ll expand to other snacks and treats — he already bought the proofing equipment to make malassadas, a Portuguese doughnut that is popular in Hawaii.
Opening challenges
Because the space was almost fully built out, the renovation process was relatively simple but Pei still had to navigate the permitting and construction process as a first-timer, by himself, with no experience or connections in the hospitality industry. He quickly found out there was no easy step-by-step checklist online as he'd expected. “Everyone in business says it’s going to be hard so I mentally prepared myself for that,” Pei says. “But then there were so many points I feel like where I thought, ‘Oh, I never thought it’d be this hard.’”He spent weeks waiting for the City of Lakewood to respond and even longer for the review process, which, on average, takes fourteen business days. “As soon as I took over the property in September, the clock started ticking because we’re paying rent every month," Pei says. "I was constantly worried about whether I was going to get this in time. Are my permits going to get approved in time?”
On top of that, he was facing some judgment and backlash from family and friends for dropping out of college his senior year. To save face with his parents, “I’ve just been telling them it’s a gap year and then hopefully just get [TropTai] somewhere and then be like, ‘I can keep doing this,’ instead of being like, ‘Oh yeah, I failed miserably, I’ll go back to college,’” Pei shares with a nervous laugh.
The backlash from friends was more surprising. “Their goal is to graduate and get a job. I just wanted a different path. I had one friend who wants to do startups but when I told him, he said, ‘Oh, it’s super important for you to get your degree,'" Pei recalls.
There was judgement from fellow restaurateurs and business partners, too, who openly expressed surprise that Pei was so young. “I discovered if I need to do a business meeting…even just wearing a polo, a collared shirt, people take me more seriously,” he says. Pei remembers explaining to a fellow business owner who owns franchises why he decided not to go down that route and being dismissed for his answer because, being so young, he couldn’t possibly understand the risk.
But being so young is also a secret strength. The vast majority of people who attended the grand opening found TropiTai through Instagram, where Pei posts cinematic direct-to-camera vlogs. “I feel like with so many businesses, it’s just super corporate or just trying to sell you something," Pei says. "I want people to look at my page and think, it’s a guy, he’s just having fun."
TropTai is located at 98 Wadsworth Boulevard in Lakewood. For more information about its hours and upcoming reopening, follow it @tropitai on Instagram.
