Close To Home: Eight Green Lilies
Posted on August 15, 2023 Posted by Athena Scalzi 10 Comments
Most of you probably know by now that I’m a bit of a boba tea fanatic. As such, I was excited to hear that a local Bradfordian with a passion for boba was setting up shop right in the middle of my little town. Now, I’m happy to report that Eight Green Lilies has finally opened to the public and is serving up refreshing lemonades and green teas with popping pearls!
Here’s how it works:
After you pick your size, you can choose between lemonade and green tea as the base of your drink (there’s also diet green tea as an option!). Then, you pick which kind of popping boba you want, and finally select the flavor you want your base to be. There’s so many great combinations to try, which is why I ended up ordering four different types.
First, I tried a strawberry lemonade with honey popping pearls:
Despite my obsession with boba, I had never tried popping pearls before, only tapioca pearls. I was a bit nervous that I wouldn’t like them, but it turns out I had nothing to worry about! Popping boba is awesome, especially this delicious honey kind. Strawberry was the perfect pick to accompany these sweet bursts of honey.
After totaling demolishing that one, I got another flavor to go. This one was passionfruit green tea with blueberry boba:
Again, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about the green tea, but this was super yummy. I’m so glad I took a chance on it because I absolutely loved this drink. Though both bases are light and refreshing, I think I might prefer the green tea.
The next two drinks I got were also green tea based. One was watermelon flavored with pomegranate pearls, and the other was kiwi flavored with dragon fruit pearls. The cool thing about the dragon fruit pearls is that you can see the dragon fruit seeds inside:
Every combination I tried was a hit, but I think next time I go in I’ll have to try the owner’s favorite drink: Half lemonade, half diet green tea with sugar free watermelon flavoring and blueberry popping pearls. Though she also says a first timer can never go wrong with a strawberry lemonade and kiwi boba.
If this kind of boba isn’t exactly your speed, they have plans to expand into milk teas in the future! Plus, they’re looking into serving iced coffee, as well.
Eight Green Lilies also has a unique rewards card system, where you actually keep your punch card in their Rolodex and pull it out when you come in.
This is so helpful to someone like me who has a million reward cards and always forgets to actually bring them with me! Plus, who has room in their wallet to carry around so many loyalty cards?
Not only do they have this brick and mortar location, but they also have a boba truck named Bee’s Boba and More that travels to different community events such as farmer’s markets and local festivals like our very own Bradford Pumpkin Show. Be sure to check out the truck’s Facebook page to see what scheduled events they’ve got coming up, as well as their Bradford location’s page to be up to date with when they are open to the public, as their hours aren’t set in stone yet.
In their Bradford location they also sell some crafty items like tumblers and t-shirts, and I even got some earrings.
The owners have told me a bit about their plans to make their boba shop a truly welcoming place for the community and about some of the events they hope to hold to encourage the community to get together. I for one am excited to see how this business will grow and positively impact the community in the next few months.
I’m also going to make it my mission to try every combination on the menu.
So, be sure to stop by Eight Green Lilies, lounge in some of their comfy seating, try a wild combination, and tip your bobaristas.
Which combo would you try first? Have you tried popping pearls before, and do you like them better than tapioca pearls? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
I wish we had a few more places like this near me.
i’ve never heard of popping boba.
for drink – green tea with pomegranate boba and blueberry flavor… just to be different.
Great review and pictures. I have never had anything like this. But I drink a lot of green tea. I would definitely try this kind of drink, since I know what to expect now. I would try the popping pearls first, I think. And, the pictures are helpful too.
Thank you!
Does that say they charge $1 for Hugs? ;-)
drsue:
I thought the same thing until I saw the photo at the end; at least in my area, those little barrel shaped juice boxes are known as “Hugs”.
You can’t go wrong with peach+raspberry.
I love that these sort of places are becoming more popular and spreading to smaller towns. Boba shops are the new coffee shops and while I’m much more of a coffee guy, I like seeing options. Just as long as we don’t end up with a BobaBux on every corner.
I’ve seen a number of small businesses that do the loyalty card index, heck, before our chain grew to the point where it no longer made sense, we used to do it. These days, it’s all digital, no need to even carry a card and yes, of course that’s all about marketing data but we’re actually PAYING you for that data and nobody is forcing you to have a loyalty account. Of course, your single shop business probably can’t afford that, so keeping cards on file is a nice idea.
Ah, yes. Boba: proof that our ancient ancestors enjoyed sucking up tadpole eggs out of shallow pools with reeds.
They are fun, and those look like some good flavors. And I love the loyalty card system!
Todd Howard Dashoff:
Thanks for the explanation! I had no idea that’s what those drinks were called!
Despite not really being a boba tea fan in the past, I’ve actually had the popping pearls twice in the recent month, and I really enjoyed them. Once at a relatively new store near me, and once at the Wisconsin state fair. I’m definitely more of a fan of the popping pearls over the tapioca.
I do still find it a little weird to have to focus on sucking up the pearls while drinking and not directly choking on them, but maybe that’s just me. :)