A D.C.-based bubble tea shop is now serving up colorful signature beverages in Crystal City.
Spot of Tea opened last week at 1631 Crystal Drive in Water Park, offering customizable fruit tea, milk tea and matcha. With flavors including vanilla taro milk tea, mango sticky rice matcha and passionfruit green tea, the cafe’s brightly hued beverages — adjustable by the level of ice and sweetness — match its vibrant decor.
“We try to make it playful and colorful and unique,” co-owner David Cooper told ARLnow. “People taste sometimes with their eyes before they actually taste it, so making something fun and playful gives people some joy.”
Drinks start at $5.35. Oat milk is the default milk with no upcharge, and toppings include brown sugar boba, lychee jelly and matcha cloud foam.
The kiosk is the local cafe’s first Virginia outpost, joining three locations across the river in D.C.’s Dupont Circle, Georgetown and Union Market. The business replaces a vacancy left by Falafel Inc, which relocated to Restaurant Row last fall.
Cooper said the business has long had its eye on Arlington.
“A lot of customers that say they come in from Arlington, they’re like, ‘Oh, I wish you guys had a location closer to us,'” Cooper said.
The new stall is currently hosting a “Matcha Madness” promotion this month, with new flavors and scratch cards with prizes for every matcha order. These could include discounts, free drinks or branded, reusable cups, which can score customers 10% off through the business’s reusable jar discount.
New food items may also be added to the menu “in the near future,” Cooper said, though “we’re still figuring out exactly what that’ll be.”
Spot of Tea’s origins go back to Rice University, where co-owners Cooper, Glenn Baginski and Dillon Chai met. What initially began as a project for a marketing class turned into a campus tea vendor gig called East-West Tea during their senior year.
When the trio graduated in 2016, they left behind the cafe for jobs — Cooper in government contracting, and Baginski and Chai at Capital One in Dallas. But Cooper said he still had “the itch to do [his] own thing.”
“I started Spot of Tea here, and then I suckered them up to come join me,” Cooper said.
Spot of Tea officially began in 2017, popping up at D.C.-area farmers markets — including the one in Ballston — before expanding into brick-and-mortar locations.
“It’s been really enjoyable to see our staff grow from, like, not having any employees, to now, we have 25,” Cooper said.
Plans for a grand opening are currently underway, with a celebration likely to come in a few weeks.
Elsewhere at Water Park, Pizzeria Paradiso Pronto and Monstera are each preparing to open, replacing Crush Pizza & Wine and Bubbie’s Plant Burgers & Fizz.
