Bringing boba tea to downtown Waxahachie

Scrolling through Facebook Marketplace in 2021, Ashley Rucks of Red Oak stumbled upon a small camper listed for sale, which was already converted to sell coffee or boba, a tea-based drink originated from Taiwan that has tapioca pearls.

“What if I do this? What if I opened a boba shop?” she asked herself.

Rucks began to message with the seller, weighed the pros and cons with her family and calculated if it would be worth it.

“I literally had no idea how to run a business or how to make boba, like completely no idea,” she said. “I’m not really a planning person. I’m more spontaneous.”

Rucks purchased the camper, and Prickly Boba, named for her love of cactuses and boba, was born.

She first tried boba when shopping at the mall, and she said it was like “a whole new world opened up.” Soon, her entire family tried it and loved it. Since there was no place locally, they would drive to Dallas or Arlington to have boba as a “special treat.”

“We didn’t have anywhere local that we liked to go, so we kind of just made our own boba shop,” Rucks said.

After purchasing the camper, she immediately began researching how to make boba and where to buy the ingredients. With her mom and her sister, Rucks experimented with different recipes, tweaking them until they created drinks that tasted good.

“I remember, vividly, we were in my kitchen brewing tea and mixing different powders and flavors,” Rucks said.

She soon attended her first event with the camper in Palmer with only three drinks on the menu. Later that year, she bought her first storefront located at 150 U.S. Highway 77 in Waxahachie, and Prickly Boba moved indoors in early 2022.

Over time, she and her sister created their own boba recipes and expanded their menu to more than 20 different drinks including teas, coffee, lemonade and more. Every week, they release a drink of the week on social media, with it only available for purchase during that week.

“I feel like our specialty is making creative drinks,” Rucks said. “For Cinco de Mayo, we did a watermelon slush with chamoy oil in it, and we put Takis on top with a chili candy straw and then boba at the bottom, of course. We love to come up with very different and creative drinks.”

They quickly outgrew their first location. It was a small room with little to no seating available, so they usually served drinks from window. Since they only had a year lease on the space, Rucks looked for a new location with a bigger space, allowing them to have indoor seating.

“Downtown Waxahachie was always in the back of my mind,” Rucks said. “It’s kind of the ‘it’ spot for small businesses, in my opinion. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get a spot on the square. I thought it was an unrealistic goal, but this spot just happened to come up on the market.”

In early November 2022, Prickly Boba moved into a new storefront at 108 E. Franklin St. in downtown Waxahachie.

“It’s crazy,” Rucks said. “I look back at where I started … old me dreamed of being where we are now. It’s a learning experience, and I don’t think I would change anything.”

For more information, visit https://www.pricklyboba.com. To stay up to date on the drink of the week, follow @PricklyBoba on Facebook or @prickly.boba on Instagram.

Originally published December 19, 2023 - https://www.waxahachiesun.com/news/local/bringing-boba-tea-to-downtown-waxahachie/article_311819a6-7ffb-11ed-b0e7-2f2e3d775009.html