Tapioca Express

FINALLY, the absolute WORST franchise in the entire chain has shut down. Apparently, it has been for awhile now, but I didn’t even know until this past week. Had I been informed earlier, I would had thrown a party, or better yet, stood outside with flame torches in hand as if it were Devil’s Night.
Yes! The monstrosity is finally gone! Seriously, how many Tapioca Expresses have you heard about going out of business? The fact that this is one of the few ever in this cash cow chain to go belly up says it all.
Now, back to my jumping for joy!

yes, so tap ex is long gone. that pc room i guess expanded into the area that was once tap ex, b/​c when i drive by i see that dull glow from the computers in the dimly lit room.

Has this place really closed down? If so, that’s probably a good thing. I have only come here in the past when I’ve been desperate for bubble tea (and have not done so since that new Quickly opened up nearby) and every time I entered the place I felt super odd — the employees always seemed out of it and tended to be rude, and there were always random kids sleeping on the couches in the place. Also, on many occasions my bubble tea tasted overly syrupy and they always ran out of the small tapioca balls. Thank god it’s gone forever.

worse tap ex ive ever been to. There are a lot of good ones up here, but the drink made me throw up later and the guy charged me more than the menu price. The regular milk tea with pearls was listed as 2.75, but he charged me 3.31 attributing it to tax, and when i asked him why he charged me so much, he said that’s what i ordered. Instead of throwing a fit with the high school aged punk who didn’t know how to give good customer service or do simple math. i just paid the extra 30 cents or so.
No seats to sit, except a depressing dark computer cyber game café filled with sad people playing games. sigh… worse tap ex ever.

I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE THIS PLACE. I’D GIVE IT NEGATIVE 5 STARS IF I COULD.
I walk up to the counter to order a drink… annnnd the stupid cashier just stares me in the face. NO HI, NO NOTHING. I then proceed to order… theeeen the stupid chic answers her phone WHILE I’M ORDERING.
«Do you have any onion rings?»
«I’m checking… AMIgawd he got arrested??»
Annoying ASS teens LYING on the couch taking up all the places to sit.
PFFFFFF.

I have high tolerance I guess, hence the 2 stars instead of 1.
Why is it when I’m at the Millbrae and El Camino Stop light I can see that Tap X is all dark. Seems they are closed at «odd» hours (i.e. 8P, 7PM ish… but open late some other days) Do they have crazy hours or something or are they open only when they feel like it?
The «kids» hanging around never seem to bother me, although I’m sure they are sizing me up and all. My drinks were always OK, service spotty — from workers on personal calls while making my drinks to friendly service. Not my favorite stop for a boba drink but it’s close by and with the parking lot in the back, it’s kinda easy to park. Just watch out for the teen drivers that might want to hit you head on.

I used to live in the East Bay and would often go to the Tapioca Express in Newark where the drinks/​food were very good and the service outstanding. So I came to this Tap with high expectations. Bleh.
The drinks here were alright but the service was lacking. Even the layout of the place felt weird to me, as odd as that sounds. Also, being right next to a video game café doesn’t help as there were a group of teens directly outside acting like, well, teens, and smoking near the entrance so the smoke kept drifting into Tapioca Express. While that’s no fault of this establishment, it’s still something to consider when deciding to come here. Which I don’t be doing again.

Wow! Nobody likes this place… I agree with everybody else who says that the customer service here sucks. The kids who work here would rather be hanging out with their friends than working… oh wait! They ARE just hanging out with their friends. The chick who took my order was so scowly and unpleasant I couldn’t wait to leave.
But at least my jasmine milk tea was OK. But the pearls — oh, those pearls. Some of them weren’t soft all the way through, kinda like they weren’t cooked all the way or something…
I definitely won’t be going back to this TapEx any time soon. I don’t live around there anyway.

This place was always ghetto, but with the new management, it’s moved into frightful Ghetto X2 Land.
Get ready to walk through the wannabe gangster gauntlet in front of their store if you want to get a drink.
Loud, crappy music, obnoxious teenagers with nothing better to do than show off their «bad attitude» at a boba place.
Service is SLOOOOOOOW and they forget orders a lot.
Their teas taste funny.
Their stuff costs a TON now and sometimes I just can’t believe they have the nerve to charge you more for something so below average.
ARGH! MILLBRAE TAPEX, I AM DONE WITH YOU! OUR RELATIONSHIP IS OVER!

what a lousy place to get milk teas, snow bubbles & snacks!!!
the lychee milk tea that was concocted by this high school kid was just purely disgusting. he also pumped a copius amount of this «suppossedly lychee syrup» in the glass and my milk tea tasted sour!..
it could be the milk was expired, since it wasn’t in the ice box or he put the wrong flavor… it just tasted wrong… funky!
and the snacks… horrible…they serve this filipino snacks, such as ukoy-​ukoy, taho, fish balls & other nastiness that could give you a stomache or diarrhea.
this place made me so upset!
that one star is actually a zero!

The last time my daughter went to Tapioca Express for a tapioca drink, they were out of tapioca.
Poor service, disinterested staff. As for ambiance, the place feels kind of cold and uncomfortable. Parking is lousy, and the driveway entrance is strange.
The drink itself is okay.

THIS PLACE SUCKS BIG TIME! Doesn’t even warrant a star… I totally agree with my fellow Unilocalers. Customer service is pathetic… just ordered a mocha snow bubble and the boring gal with the glasses couldn’t even muster a hello or thank you… I didn’t realize she was an employee as she was busy lounging on the couch talking to her friend. That should have been the red flag but worse of all… THEY KEEP THEIR TAPIOCA IN A FRIGGIN CROCK POT! Avoid this place like the plague and go down one block to Quickly instead!

i went to 2 tapioca express so far, one in LA and this one here. this one here is bad, all bad… bathrooms are gross, floor is sticky and their customer service isnt all that great. their tapioca balls are like months old and if you get their thai tea, its basically asking for diabetes. id wait and go back to LA for some tap ex

Oh how I miss Lucy’s Tea in Mtn View. No 30,000 flavors, just one. A five star process of hand made tea. This is not Lucy’s. Everything is preprocessed and kranked out. I hadn’t had it in a while and one of us had never had it so the experience was to be had. The guys working at the counter actually were pretty decent so I didn’t get the lousy service some people have complained about. The end product however was just not up to snuff of what I’ve had elsewhere.

Summary: Do yourself a favor and eat a Chalk stick and then drink some sugar water. It will taste just like their product except you don’t have to pay $ 3.00.
This place was horrible and it seems this franchise has pretty bad quality control. Their other branch in San Mateo is good, and this one is just run horribly. The people at the counter clearly are not happy to be there nor are they enthusiastic about their business. The product tastes like powder and sugar water with tapioca balls that are hard… like really hard.

DISGUSTING~I went here with a friend for the first time, because I’ve heard good things about the Tapioca Express in San Mateo. So I figured why not, it’s closer~EWWW! While we were in line, there were two clerks chit chatting with each other about the «FIONE GUY AT THE GAS STATION» (actual words). One, fiddling with her phone obviously too busy to look up, and the other one was actually fixing her hair, touching the food and then, get this~LICKED HER FINGERS, THEN GRABBED A HANDFUL OF ICE TO PUT IN A CUP FOR MIXING!!! I was so mortified, I tapioca expressed my ass out of there!

Yeah, the service here sucks. A bunch of snarky teenagers manning the register and making crappy drinks. But if I were a teenager working in a boba tea joint, I’d probably be snarky too.
Other factoids:
They were stingy with their tapiocas but that’s probably a good thing because they were still raw.
The spicy fried chicken tasted sour.
Little high school girls seem to congregate here to gawk at the little high school boys working.
Thank goodness I don’t hang out in Millbrae.

The place is ok… Clerks are unprofessional, which we probably should come to expect from a tapioca café such as this. Price is fine. My wife says they are always out of sesame anything (i.e. sesame milk tea, etc)…

umm… pay the extra 50 cents to $ 1 and go to kuya’s (
or
) for an «over rice» plate… you’ll get 10x better cheap filipino food…
but to be fair… i’ll let you know about the food… here…it serves up flipino food in plastic japanese style to-​go bento box containers… dry old rice with salty soysauce ground pork on top, slice of tomato and lettuce, 1 soysauce egg cut in half with same salty ground soysauce pork, and your choice of tocino, longanisa, tapa, adobo, bangus, hot dog, hamburger, corn beef. etc. for $ 4.99 to $ 6.50…like the other review…“bad, bad, bad…$&*!”…(i’m tempted to think that the 5 star review is fake)
drinks are below average… had coworker pick up drinks from here before. but…it’s never consistant… just go few blocks down to quickly…(but, quickly has speed issues)…okay.there are no good milk tea place in millbrae. let me know if you find one…