Pauline Ang "Twrls" Up a Modern Milk Tea

by Debra Lau Whelan

While most Americans were locked down during the early days of COVID-19, Pauline Ang was busy at home mixing formulas and sourcing suppliers for her first company.

Her months of hard work paid off. By the fall of 2021, Ang created Twrl Milk Tea and began selling cans of lightly caffeinated, plant-based drinks to more than 30 natural food markets in the San Francisco Bay area and to Amazon customers nationwide.

Ang and co-founder, Olivia Chen, have clearly tapped into a new market of health-conscious milk tea fans looking for a low-sugar, low-calorie, and low-carb drink with zero artificial flavoring. And Trwl’s reach is spreading; it’s now available in restaurants, cafes, and retail stores in Colorado, Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania. A major grocery chain plans to stock Twrl on its shelves in Northern California later this month before rolling it out nationwide later this year.

“Boba is kind of an indulgence,” says Ang. “But [Twrl] is guilt-free. You can drink it every day and feel good about it because it has all the good ingredients.”

Twrl’s nitro-infused drink contains non-GMO pea milk instead of dairy and all three flavors--original black, jasmine, and hojicha--are packed with antioxidants. Each 7.5 oz. serving contains only 50 calories and seven grams of sugar, which come from agave, a sweetener with a lower glycemic index. Even Ang’s nine-year-old daughter enjoys an occasional drink, best served ice cold or frothed up and warm as a latte.

“I drink coffee myself, so I don’t want to give it a bad rap,” explains Ang. “But we’re positioning ourselves as a coffee alternative because we’re not crazy caffeinated like an energy drink or a cup of black coffee. We’re just enough to give you that pick-me-up that you need.”

Ang’s obsession with boba tea started while studying marketing and business at UC Berkeley in the late 1990s when a friend took her to a nearby cafe called Wonderful Foods, a place Ang describes as the OG boba spot.. “They were my inspiration,” she says. “I really, truly think they’re the best in San Francisco.” Since then, Ang has sampled hundreds of bubble teas around the world but found herself drinking less of it over time.

“[Boba teas] don’t make me feel good,” she admits. “They’re so high in sugar, and a lot of places make boba teas with powder, so they’re not even real tea. I couldn’t find a really good tea that I could feel good about drinking a lot of, so I decided to create one myself.”

Ang took a rather circuitous route to becoming an AAPI business owner. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Hawaii, she began her career as a marketing and branding executive at Plumtree Software but went back to earn an MFA from Academy of Art University when she realized her true passion was in graphic design.

“I was always really into design,” she says. “When I was little I would collect business cards from everywhere I went, and I loved to design stationery and sell it to my mom.”

After art school, Ang went to work for a design company, taking a five-month maternity leave when her daughter was born in 2012. When her son arrived four years later, she decided to take more time off to raise her kids. Ang felt the itch to rejoin the workforce in 2019, but this time she wanted to try something that she felt “truly passionate about” and would also give her the flexibility to spend more time with family. That’s when she had the idea for a vegan milk tea company.

“I knew I wanted to create my own brand one day, but it was just never the right time until now,” says Ang, explaining that the name Twrl, came from an old Chinese legend about a Ming Emperor who discovered tea when leaves from a tree twirled in the wind and landed in his pot of boiling water.

Twrl’s entry into the marketplace couldn’t have come at a better time. The global tea market was valued at about $200 billion in 2020 and is expected to exceed a whopping $318 billion by 2025. At the same time, the worldwide bubble tea market is expected to reach $3.4 billion by 2027, up from slightly more than $2 billion today.

Creating a tasty, ethically-sourced organic milk tea wasn’t easy. Ang spent 2019 sampling a variety of teas and more than 20 plant-based milks. She even had to purchase a second refrigerator just to store them. “I was filling the fridge up with bottles and bottles of milk tea; gallons worth. My husband and I were both really caffeinated that year just trying all different kinds of tea.”

Once Ang finally mixed the perfect formula, disaster struck. First, COVID-19 shut down most of the world. Then, she found out that the flavors changed dramatically once the tea went through a sterilization process called retort.

“I was so devastated because they tasted terrible, so I basically had to go back to the drawing board and figure out what the problem was,” she explains.

It all turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Ang ended up using the time at home to help her five- and nine-year-old kids navigate their schooling on Zoom while also working with a food scientist to reformulate her teas. They learned that the flavors changed because the commercial-grade tea Ang used wasn’t up to snuff. But the problem was solved once she found two small, family-run tea farms in China and Japan to supply her with premium, organic fair-trade black, jasmine, and hojicha teas.

Before Chen joined as co-founder in July 2021, Ang was basically a one-woman show. That’s when all of her previous work experience in marketing, branding, packaging, and graphic design kicked in.

“I literally did everything; all the marketing, all the operations and customer service, and finding a fulfillment center.” She even designed the Twrl website and logo.

What’s in store for the future? While the focus is on growing the brand, there might be a new matcha latte and a decaf version of her tea on the horizon, and perhaps a healthy, pre-made boba that can be mixed into drinks.

“I really want to create a better-for-you boba,” she says. “Or maybe a different kind of ready-to-eat topping that’s similar to boba but just doesn't have all of the calories, carbs, and sugar. It’s all about convenience.”

It’s Day 6 of Covid, and a Rapid Antigen Test Comes Back Positive. Stay Home, Say Virologists.
by Rae Ellen Bichell

Did You Know?: Tea

JADE Pieces: Going Coconuts

Who, What, Where and How: AAPI Organizations

Learn More: What Others Are Saying

How to Report Hate Crimes Against AAPIs