In order to set the scene, Sophia Leang stands and walks to the front door of Jubi Tea & Sweets. As she goes, she explains that she placed the counter with the register at an angle from the entrance, so people would have a moment to experience the vibe of the place before they’re greeted.
“I want to be able to look around before ordering,” she says as she reenacts a new customer's arrival. Her head tilts to the left, taking in a counter with gifts, including bubble tea plushies and other tea-themed toys; beyond that, there’s a display case filled with Asian-inspired pastries. She looks to the right, where there is a full cafe space with lots of natural light and comfortable seats and tables. The far wall is a mural consisting of slanting bright pastel colors. In its center written in black letters are the words: “Spread Love and PositiveTEA.”
These are the details that Leang visualized when building out her brand-new bubble tea shop in Bethel, and it shows in the finished product. Jubi Tea & Sweets had a soft opening on Saturday, December 7. That first day, visitors felt Leang’s vision for an immersive, family-friendly, upbeat bubble tea-café vibe.
This isn’t surprising, as moving an idea from thought to reality is something Leang knows all about. For the past 20 years, she’s been a filmmaker. Serving as a production manager and producer, she’s toured the world, bringing visions to life for a diverse array of projects ranging from commercial shoots to documentary films. She worked on the live capture of the musical Hamilton, and she traveled to 8 different countries last summer while making the film Freediver. That documentary tells the story of Alexey Molchanov, the world’s greatest living freediver, and coincidentally it was released to stream on Prime Video the same day as Jubi Tea opened.
The seed for Jubi Tea & Sweets was planted back before the pandemic when Leang and her family were living in Bushwick, Brooklyn. At that time, millennials were moving out of the neighborhood, which was trending younger. “So a lot of the new businesses that opened were bars and coffee shops more for older kids,” she says. “I'm like, ‘Where can I take my daughter to do playdates?’”
Leang had the idea for a “play cafe” that would offer an indoor playground for children and a range of coffee drinks for parents. But the startup costs for this idea were high because of insurance requirements for a playground, and Leang was thinking of other concepts but hadn’t settled on anything. Then the pandemic hit.
Leang and her family decided to move out of the city. She found Bethel through a friend who lived in Danbury and quickly fell in love with the community and its walkable downtown. A little while after moving to Bethel, she had an idea. “I was talking to my husband. I was like, ‘It's a really cute town with a lot of mom-and-pop shops, and they have almost everything, but they're missing one thing: a bubble tea shop.’”
Bubble tea was something Leang knew well because of her time in New York and also her heritage. Her parents fled Cambodia during the turmoil of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and then met and married at a refugee camp in Thailand. That is where Leang was born, though the family ultimately moved to the Bronx, which is where Leang was raised.
Bubble tea originated in Taiwan, and Leang loved that bubble tea shops were family-friendly, as that tied in with her original vision. She started searching for locations in downtown Bethel, and after looking at several spaces and driving the street at night to see which storefronts stood out, she decided on her current spot near the corner of Greenwood Avenue and P.T. Barnum Square. Creating a space that fit her vision took a lot of renovation, and she was thankful for working with Bruno and Co. Contracting.
To create the menu, she worked with her sister, Judy, to develop recipes and taste-tested them on family and friends. Judy also helped her come up with the name, which is short for jubilation. Even in its soft opening form, the shop offers a variety of classic teas, milk teas, and fruit teas available with the classic tapioca (or boba) pearls, as well as lychee jelly, coconut jelly, and other “bubble” or “pearl options.” There are also bubble waffles—thick, cartoonish-looking waffles—and an assortment of Asian-inspired pastries made specially for Jubi Tea & Sweets by Uncle Matt's Bakery and Cafe in Sandy Hook. These include a matcha coconut cheesecake, chiffon cupcakes, and macarons.
In just her first few days in business, Leang says she’s so impressed by how the community has embraced her and the help and support she’s received from nearby businesses, including Famous Pizza, Soulber, Gather Boutique, Boost Bowl, and Uncle Leo’s & Rosny Gourmet. Jubi Tea & Sweets will operate in soft opening mode as the team works out service details and some menu items are tweaked and finalized. The grand opening will take place on January 25.
In the meantime, Leang hasn’t abandoned her former career as a filmmaker but has had to turn down offers, including one to work in Barcelona for three months last fall. But she’s not planning on quitting the film industry altogether. “I still plan to do work on set, but it has to be a really small shoot,” she says. Right now, however, her focus is on telling a different type of story.
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