In the past two decades, Kansas City, Missouri-based Dragonfly Tea Zone has taken on many forms.
Owner Doug Phung opened the shop as a kiosk at Kansas City’s River Market (then called Boba Express) in 2003.
The shop moved into a permanent brick-and-mortar space at the market three years later, rebranding as Lollicup Tea Zone.
Since then, it has grown with three more locations on the Missouri side of the metro and adopted its third name: Dragonfly Tea Zone.
Now the shop is getting ready to debut on the other side of the state line. Phung aims to open a new kiosk at Oak Park Mall by the end of March.
Dragonfly Tea Zone will be upstairs in the mall
- Dragonfly Tea Zone will move into a space on the upper level of the mall, near jewelry store Zales, clothing retailer Forever 21 and the food court.
- The space was previously occupied by tea brand Teavana, before the brand’s stores all closed roughly eight years ago.
- Once it opens, Dragonfly Tea Zone will likely operate under standard Oak Park Mall hours — 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.
Dragonfly Tea Zone serves a wide variety of teas
- Dragonfly Tea Zone is primarily known for its boba teas, which come in flavors like papaya, honeydew and coconut milk teas.
- The shop also serves more than 130 varieties of loose leaf teas.
- Outside of tea, the shop also serves smoothies, available in flavors like banana, mango, peach and green apple.
- Dragonfly Tea Zone also serves coffee drinks and sweet treats like crepes and macarons.
This marks Dragonfly Tea Zone’s first JoCo location
Phung said that by opening a bubble tea shop of his own, he’d hoped to fill a gap in the local market.
During visits to his brother in California, he said there was a wealth of bubble tea shops from which to choose on the West Coast.
Working as an IT consultant before, he also had the chance to travel across the country and try out boba in lots of other states. He’d hoped to bring something similar back to Kansas City.
“There’s a void that needs to be filled, and that’s where hopefully, we come in,” he said.
So he started spending his weekends at the River Market kiosk — selling mostly smoothies at first, he said, as many customers were unfamiliar with bubble tea at the time.
But more than 20 years and five shops later, Phung said the hype has grown locally for bubble tea, and business has “kept booming” for his shop.
“What we’ve been doing is working, and we would like to do more of it,” he said. “It’s exciting to see it grow and just kind of watch people’s reaction — to see people having the joy of coming into our space. That’s what makes it fun to go to work every day.”
If all goes well, Phung hopes to expand Dragonfly Tea Zone’s presence on the Kansas side with even more stores.
“Kansas is a very big tea-drinker market,” he said. “We’re always trying to evolve, to give our customers what our customers want. So it’s good to have feedback from them on the Kansas side as well.”
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